Index

AARE International Education Research Conference - 2009

29 November - 3 December 2009

Canberra

AARE 2009 Conference Proceedings

Compiled by Peter L. Jeffery

ISSN 1324-9320

• The symbol ® indicates that the paper with the corresponding papercode for each of the abstracts below, was refereed.
• All papercodes given alongside the abstracts below are URLs and all link directly to each full paper in the AARE Digital Archive ( Conference Papers Collections).
• AARE does not put ® on the papers because AARE does not alter members' submitted work in any way.
• Members submit papers before refereeing so the papers do not necessarily carry the ® symbol athough some authors submit revised versions after adding the ® symbol. This index leading to the papers is controlled by AARE and is the definitive certification that the paper was refereed prior to conference.

ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS - Conference 2009

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Radford and Keynote Lectures etc.

Professor Val Klenowski

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START | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

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Abstracts

A

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Positive Behaviour for Learning: aiming to implement a workable, positive and sustainable approach to managing student behaviour

Katrina Barker and Alex Yeung, University of Western Sydney

Disruptive student behaviour not only impedes learning outcomes for students but also impacts negatively on teacher efficacy and wellbeing (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001; Lewis, 1999). Teachers who feel overwhelmed and undermined by poor student behaviour, low student engagement and motivation, are less effective in the classroom. These teachers frequently revert to coercive and ineffective forms of discipline when challenged with difficult behaviour (Lewis, 1997). Consequently, the establishment of workable, positive and sustainable processes for dealing productively with student behaviour issues remains an educational challenge.

This research examines the effectiveness of a behaviour management approach, Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports (PBIS), adapted from the USA into the New South Wales Department of Education and Training Western Sydney Region (NSW DET WSR) and renamed as Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL). The research compares schools implementing PBL (experimental) with schools on a wait list (control). Favourable results for the experimental group were evident in terms of:

1. higher School-wide Evaluation Tool (SET) scores reflecting systemic improvements in behaviour management,
2. more positive teacher attitudes towards strategies of promoting positive behaviours,
3. higher academic self-concept, and
4. higher motivation.

Although PBL is underpinned by principles of behaviourism, teachers interpreted and implemented techniques which sometimes aligned with social constructivist principles.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 28, WIL091264 Classroom management: Compliance and beyond.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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BAR091305

Paper

Positive Behaviour for Learning: Differentiating teachers' self-efficacy

Katrina Barker, Brenda Dobia and Mary Mooney, University of Western Sydney and Alexander Yeung, National Institute of Education, Singapore

The objective of this research is to compare the self-efficacy of teachers from schools implementing Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) (experimental group) with teachers in schools who are on the wait list (control group). PBL is a behaviour management innovation adapted from the US, Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports (PBIS) that has been progressively introduced across schools by the NSW Department of Education and Training Western Sydney Region (DET WSR). It was hypothesised that teachers who had been implementing PBL (experimental) would report higher teacher self-efficacy than those in the control group. The Ohio State Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale was used to measure teacher self-efficacy. The sample comprised 394 primary and secondary teachers from the WSR. Interestingly the results revealed that PBL teachers had equally high self-efficacy of instruction and management compared with the control group and there was no significant difference between teachers from PBL and non-PBL schools in their self-efficacy of engagement and classroom management. The implications of these findings are considered.

Key Phrase:   Motivation and Learning

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BAR091587   ®

Paper

Implementing the National Accelerated Literacy Program in Northern Territory: Findings of questionnaire, focus group and observation of teaching practice.

Claire Bartlett, Gary Robinson, Tess Lea, Perry Morrison, Charles Darwin University and Judith Rivalland, Edith Cowan University

The National Accelerated Literacy Program (NALP) attempts to rapidly improve literacy outcomes for students-particularly Indigenous students in the Northern Territory-using a method of literacy teaching known as Accelerated Literacy (AL). In this presentation the authors present the key findings of the evaluation of the implementation of NALP (2006-2008), that relate to the question: How were the program's implementation in-schools was regarded by participants and did the implementation lead to the kinds of teaching required by the Accelerated Literacy method? The analyses of questionnaire, focus group interview and observational data shows that NALP has achieved the implementation of AL in a large number of NT schools. Elements of the program have been shown to be effective in building capacity and a large number of teachers and principals have been engaged in the process of change. Notwithstanding the progress in implementation of the program in NT schools, the results of this evaluation suggest that there has been only partial and at best uneven success in achieving improved outcomes for students and in changing teacher practice to achieve the levels of teaching of AL to desirable standards in classrooms.

Key Phrase: Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation

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BAT091454    ®

Paper

Ethical moves: Innovation in qualitative research: An example of an ethical and effective cross-cultural research methodology using video

Melodie Bat, Charles Darwin University; Renez Lammon, Casuarina Street Primary School; Carol Bennell, Baler Primary School and Ses Zaro, Gunbalunya School

This paper tells the story of a journey to create an ethical space in order to develop a collaborative, cross-cultural research methodology.

The"ethical space"is a concept, a process that unfolds, that is inclusive of a series of stages from dialogue to dissemination of results, each played out in many different codes and relationships at the level of research practice. (Ermine, Sinclair & Jeffery 2004, p.21) Researchers strive for ethical practice and where research is conducted across cultures developing an ethical practice can be a learning journey in itself. In a search for methods and tools to use within such an ethical space, one non-Indigenous researcher undertook a small project with three ex-students, now successful classroom teachers. In this project, the issue of ethical practice was as important as the research question itself, and an issue for constant reflection.

Qualitative research and collaborative methodologies have been noted as the most effective and appropriate to use in cross-cultural research (Ermine, Sinclair & Jeffery 2004; Henry et al 2002). It has also been predicted that the use of visual methodologies will be an expanding area of development (Denzin & Lincoln 2005). Just what this looks like in practice is not entirely clear. There is a small but growing literature detailing research projects that have used these approaches, but very little has been written on the specifics of methodologies that have been developed.

It is the assertion of the researchers in this project that the tools and methods of analysis themselves also need to sit within the ethical space. In this paper, the researchers reflect on their research journey and detail one such methodology that emerged from their collaborative endeavour. This work used video footage and storytelling to create a powerful and effective tool to answer the research question at hand and provides a useful map for others wishing to undertake such a journey.

Key Phrase:   Innovation in Research

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BIS09915

Paper

Investigating the use of education for sustainability to engage Indigenous learners

Susan Zela Bissett, Griffith University

Indigenous learners in Australia are widely perceived to be failing in educational achievement. Yet can it be equally valid to regard schools as having failed to meet the needs and recognise the strengths of Indigenous learners. This research examines the potential fit between EfS and Indigenous land & resource management as an avenue towards engagement for Indigenous learners through involvement in EfS projects. Commonalities and areas of compatiblity common ground between Education for Sustainability and Indigenous practices of land and resource use are explored.

In the current climate, many Indigenous learners display attitudes of reluctance and resistance to school and teachers, while problems on Indigenous communities are often blamed for the children's failure to achieve. Involving children in projects broadly defined as Education for Sustainability may offer a way forward for several reasons. Firstly, in regard to pedagogical practice, involvement in real-life environmentally-friendly projects may have significant similarities to traditional pedagogy, where a stronger connection existed between learning activities in childhood and future survival. Secondly, the hands-on, outdoor aspect of such projects may align better with the learning preferences of many Indigenous learners for experiential, holistic and meaningful activities. Thirdly, the ethical and philosophical base may be more acceptable at the values level to older community members than the standard curriculum. If children are sensitive to the underlying conviction and agreement of their elders, a lessening of resistance behaviours towards formal education may occur.

This paper will investigate some of the educational settings conducting environmental projects which involve Indigenous learners in Australia. It will evaluate their effectiveness in maintaining interest and engagement with formal education from the perspectives of three groups: the participants, their families and communities, and the providers. In particular it examines three (3) areas with high numbers of Indigenous learners, the Kimberleys in Western Australia, the South Burnett region of SE Queensland and Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Data was also gathered from campuses with significant Indigenous enrolments where staff responded to an e-mail survey will be examined as a possible meeting point for Indigenous feeling for country and the bonding of all young people to planet earth and specific places that is required to create a sustainable future. Finally, the paper examines some implications of the findings for future directions in the education of Indigenous learners.

Key Phrase:   Indigenous Education

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BLA091379

Paper

Supporting teachers as action researchers

Damian Blake, Deakin University

Teachers' professional learning has a critical influence on students' learning outcomes and much attention has been paid to understanding how effective ongoing professional learning for teachers can be achieved in schools. This paper reports on research exploring how processes of action research can be combined with support for teachers becoming active participants in wider communities of professional practice. The research approach draws on previous studies highlighting action research as an effective strategy for promoting teachers' ongoing professional learning. However, the researchers consider that such benefits may be further enhanced by encouraging teachers to systematically document, publish and present their action research initiatives so they can be shared in a wider community of professional practice. In this study the researchers supported small teams teachers from 22 primary schools in their development of school-based action research projects. The projects were aligned with regional improvement priorities and broadly covered the areas of improving assessment, developing students' thinking skills and the use of information and communication technology. The teams of teachers collaborated with the researchers, regional curriculum leaders and other teachers in their region to develop and refine their initial action research questions and strategies. The teams the met locally and as a regional group several times throughout one year to present their progressive findings as they carried out their action research projects, and to reflect on what they were learning as a larger community of professionals. Teachers were encouraged to document their action research projects throughout the year which were then compiled into a book to be shared with other teachers in the region. All of the teams presented their findings to other colleagues at a final regional symposium. At the conclusion of the year the teachers were invited to participate in a survey investigating the potential for this approach to improve their experiences of ongoing professional learning. Teachers were also interviewed to explore changes in the ways they were framing the concept of their own professional learning.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 43, WEL091532 Models of professional learning: A comparative study.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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BOK09064

Paper

The capacity to aspire: higher education aspirations of students of low socioeconomic status

Jessica Bok, University of South Australia

This paper explores the aspirations that young people of low socioeconomic status (low SES) have for higher education. Drawing on Appadurai's (2004) notion of aspiration as a cultural capacity, I propose that low SES students have less developed capacities to aspire, and that this contributes to their low rates of university enrolment in the current Australian context. Differences between the cultural experiences of low and high SES families can produce different understandings about school, which may render the process of making educational choices more complex for low SES students. Bourdieu's work draws attention to the structures that may reduce low SES students' capacities to powerfully navigate schooling. These students often have social and cultural experiences that are not rewarded at school in the same ways as those of high SES students, whose 'habitus' is often more closely aligned with the logic of institutional schooling. Also, low SES students often do not have the same informed knowledge about post-secondary educational pathways, particularly if they have not been exposed to multi-generational experience with higher education. Without this kind of knowledge students are forced to take a risk on the unknown, and this lack of clarity regarding potential educational directions contributes to the limitation of their choices and to their capacity to aspire.

This paper reports on an honours study that investigated significant factors that inform students' self-conceived ideas of an achievable future for themselves. Previous research suggests that there is an aspiration gap occurring within the post-compulsory high school years, when students replace their 'dream' aspirations with more 'realistic' assessments based on their cultural and educational experiences. In this process, low SES students are more likely to select school subjects based on their personal interests than high SES students. Due to differences of experience and less knowledge concerning the navigation of educational institutions, focussing on the potential of school subjects that will prepare them for their chosen field within higher education may be more difficult for low SES students. Drawing on interviews with teachers and students, as well as students' visual representations of their home and community lives, this paper presents a comparative analysis of the aspirations and cultural experiences of middle-years students from both low SES and high SES contexts. It provides insight into differences in the development of students' capacities to aspire during this crucial time when they become more aware of their location in social space.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 20, GAL091198 Aspirations for higher education: exploring strategies for widening participation.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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BOO091031    ®

Paper

Coping with school moves

Helen Boon, James Cook University

School mobility is widely held to be disruptive to students' education either directly, by disrupting curriculum continuity or indirectly through social stress and engagement issues affecting the student. Paradoxically, mobility has not been consistently linked to poorer academic outcomes; where mobility was linked with lower academic achievement, behaviour problems and/or inadequate adjustment issues were also found. Adjustment problems implicate student coping strategies. There is a gap in the mobility literature in relation to coping strategies.

This study tests the hypothesis that when particular academic coping strategies are employed by mobile students academic achievement is supported and behavioural problems are avoided. A sample of over one thousand secondary students was employed to gather measures of mobility, academic achievement, suspensions and coping strategies in the pursuit of the following questions:

1. Is mobility linked to lower achievement in Australian students?
l Is mobility linked to suspensions in Australian students?
2. Are coping strategies employed by mobile students whose academic achievement is satisfactory or better different from those employed by mobile students who are failing?
3. Are coping strategies employed by mobile students who are suspended different from those employed by mobile students who are never suspended?
4. Supporting prior findings the mobile students of this study achieved at lower levels and had more suspensions than the non- mobile students.

Results indicate that positive coping strategies play an important role in the achievement profile of mobile students. Adaptive coping was linked to higher academic achievement while the converse was found for non-productive coping strategies in mobile students. Possible explanations for prior inconsistent findings are suggested.

Children of mobile middle and high SES families and those whose moves are necessitated by parental employment such as military families, rarely report negative effects. In addition, pre-existing differences have been found to account for achievement differences between mobile and other students in longitudinal studies. Results here suggest that it is not only mobility per se that determines children's outcomes but rather the reasons for moving and the family's attitude to moving. Adolescent's coping repertoires have been found to be largely developed over time in concert with their family's reactions to the range of circumstances they face. They result from socialising influences found within the family. Strategies modelled at home might be the ones the child/adolescent learns to use to manage stress. This could explain why children of some highly mobile families rarely report adverse academic achievement outcomes.

Key Phrase:   Motivation and Learning

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BOO091032    ®

Paper

Parental views about science education for informed citizenship

Helen Boon, James Cook University

Low post-compulsory science enrolments for secondary students have been a growing concern across the Western world; curriculum reforms to increase scientific literacy levels for civic scientific literacy and enhance science participation at secondary level are making little difference.

Much research has examined factors relating to science curricula and students' attitudes about science, but issues relating to parental views of science education remain largely unexplored. This is a critical omission since parents have been demonstrated to be important in influencing their children's perceptions and interpretations of the world around them throughout the schooling years and beyond. Because parents have a strong role in shaping their children's subject selection and career choices, this study explored parental attitudes about science education. Indigenous and non-Indigenous parents of pupils in grades 5-7 in state schools were invited to participate in focus interviews in a regional Australian city.

Results include a perspective which was empirically demonstrated for the first time: this group of non-Indigenous and Indigenous parents believed geography, history and social studies subjects (under the umbrella of SOSE, study of society and the environment) to be a better preparation than science for informed citizenship. Both sets of parents were unclear as to the nature of scientific literacy, and believed science as it is currently taught in primary schools is not relevant to their children's needs and not practical, or"hands-on"enough.

More broadly, parents believed that there are too few employment opportunities for those studying the sciences. They did not know what careers were available to those studying the sciences other than in medical and allied health fields, nor which careers needed science as a prerequisite. These perceptions were particularly strong among Indigenous parents. Views such as 'science is too difficult for their children' and stereotyped perceptions of scientists were also expressed. Media influences were cited as influential in shaping both groups of parents' perceptions.

Issues of the importance of science in the curriculum and parents' ability to assist their children with science homework were also explored.

This study sheds new light in an area where there is scope for interventions which are likely to have significant impact upon parents' value and support for the study of science. They will in turn, influence their children's engagement with science subjects through secondary and post secondary levels. It also demonstrates the need to explore parental views further using a larger sample drawn from various Australian geographic locations.

Key Phrase:   Science and ICT Education

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BRA09997

Paper

Clarifying the role of reflection in the leadership of educational change

Christopher Branson, Australian Catholic University

While the academic literature regularly highlights the important role played by reflection or self-inquiry in guiding a leader towards achieving sustainable educational change, little is provided in the way of description as to what this might entail. This paper seeks to rectify this oversight. By first reviewing and collating many of the proposed perspectives on what is required of a leader in being able to implement sustainable educational change, this paper is then able to provide a framework to be used to guide such reflection and inquiry. Data from this guided reflection process then provides invaluable insight into not only the relative progress and immediate needs of the change process but also about the leader, themselves, and the authenticity and suitability of their performance within the process.

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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BRO09083

Paper

The context of movement and its social ecology

Trent Brown, Rosemary Bennett, Laura Ward and Phillip Payne, Monash University

The role of the subjective, intrinsic notions of the body as it primarily relates to movement discourses within educational settings, such as schools, community sporting clubs, the neighbourhood or the home is not well understood. The need to develop such understandings within the moving and bodily related learning areas such as physical/outdoor/dance/environmental education is warranted, as a revitalized notion of movement, and the various contexts in which movement occurs enables deeper consideration of sentient, feeling and kinaesthetic responses of the human body 'in' movement.

To consolidate and pursue the importance of the concept(s) of movement and its social ecology (Brown and Payne, 2008) such qualities, characteristics and dimensions of the movement concept must now be explored through contextualisation in these various movement related settings. As movement and moving related activities take place in various contexts, we gesture towards colleagues work in papers/presentations on environment (E) and community (C) and how such concepts individually and holistically form the trans-disciplinary potential of 'social ecology of education.'

Movement is basic to bodily practices but this 'primacy of practice/movement' is not well appreciated in the current education literature. A reconceptualised notion of movement in physical, outdoor, environmental, health and experiential education does not appear to yet get at the 'heart' of context. Where meaning-making, kinesthesis, bodily consciousness and somaesthetic understanding is offered in a positive manner, to intelligent responses to the otherwise deficit-discourses and negative rhetoric about anthropocentric and/or ecocentric 'risks' such as global warming, ozone layers, or lifestyle diseases such as the obesity, diabetes, physical inactivity, sedentary behaviours and disengagement in schools, the context of the moving body are yet to comprehensively reach these same contextual levels.

Our task as we see it is to move beyond practices of conceptualising, theorising and philosophising to a more pragmatic approach where the moving, feeling, sentient body is better understood in the differing contexts of physical education, dance, outdoor education, sport, coaching, fitness/personal training. Such contextualising, for the purposes of this paper, draws primarily on the phenomenology of movement and the body as it pertains to the physical education discourses in explaining human, social, cultural, more-than-human and environmental concerns that influence the ethico-political and intergenerational dimensions of the movement concept.

Therefore, in this paper we focus on differing cases where the intrinsic qualities and intricacies of movement are acknowledged as part of the movement concept, but that contextual issues for the practitioner, be it physical/outdoor education teacher, recreation planner or health promotion professional are examined. In presenting these cases in 'context' we gesture towards deeper layers where traditional cultural concepts of social class, gender, ethnicity may be reinterpreted through and within the 'concept and context of movement and its social ecology' in an effort to inform curriculum theory, development and pedagogy as it pertains to movement and related pedagogies.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 29, CUT091286 Contextual issues in the social ecology of movement, environment and community (MEC).

Key Phrase:   General

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BRO091131   ®

Paper

An examination of middle leadership in Western Australian secondary schools

Zoe Brooks and Rob Cavanagh, Curtin University of Technology

This study examined the complexities inherent within secondary school middle leadership positions. These formal positions typically have line management accountability through the deputy principal to the principal for the supervision of teaching and/or ancillary staff. The study investigated the formal position requirements, as well as the professional perceptions and expectations of Western Australian, secondary school middle leaders. The results presented in this paper were collected during the qualitative phase of a mixed methods research project. The qualitative phase involved two stages of data collection and analyses. Firstly, a document analysis was conducted on the formal position descriptions of middle leadership positions in a purposive sample of ten Western Australian secondary schools. Documents outlining the organisational structures of schools, as well as formal position descriptions detailing the professional responsibilities of middle leaders were collected and analysed using content analysis techniques. Additionally, nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of discipline-based, pastoral-based and program-based middle leaders across three Western Australian secondary schools. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with a senior leader of each sampled school.

The findings of the document analysis conducted on middle leadership position descriptions are presented using Sergiovanni's (1984) forces of leadership model. The application of this model allowed for the exploration of the technical, human and educational leadership roles typically required of middle leaders working in secondary schools. The results of interviews with middle and senior leaders are also presented here, with a focus on six key aspects of the middle leadership position including: the dual and dynamic nature of middle leadership; the organisational functions of middle leaders; the problems and limitations associated with middle leadership positions; the qualities and skills of effective middle leaders and their training needs; the support and review requirements of the position, as well as the personal goals and experiences of middle leaders.

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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BRO091428   ®

Paper

Ethics and digital technologies policies in Australian schools: Challenges, dilemmas, and the discourse of compliance and control

Bernard Brown, University of Canberra

The relationship between ethics and digital technologies in schools has been an area of growing concern in Australian education in recent years. This paper aims to make a contribution to greater understanding of the ways in which ethical issues are positioned and presented in digital technologies policies for Australian schools.

Media hype surrounding issues such as cyber bullying, students using mobile phones as cameras and accessing pornographic, racist and violent material through the Internet can create a negative perception of digital technologies. From this media perspective these issues are seen to be rife and out of control in Australian schools. Despite the increased use of digital technologies in schools and greater awareness of ethical issues associated with them there has been little published work from Australia about the interface between ethical considerations and policies relating to digital technologies in schools. The ethical dimension of digital technologies policies in Australian education requires further research to gain a more contextual and nuanced understanding and to give voice to the views of the key stakeholders in school communities regarding the nature of these policies. This is important particularly in the light of the Federal Government's 'Digital Technology Revolution' which occupies a high profile in the landscape of contemporary school education in Australia.

The paper argues that the policies designed by schools, educational bodies and government departments to direct and control the use of digital technologies in schools represents a discourse which is characterised by notions of compliance and control. This discourse contains language which calls upon a shared understanding of values and principles that are actually contested and ambiguous. Furthermore, the policies do not adequately acknowledge or promote the educative role schools can play in engendering responsible use of digital technologies. In order to explore the discourse associated with digital technologies policies some pertinent ethical issues related to the Internet and mobile phone use are discussed. National education declarations and documents regarding school education are examined along with regional and school based policies related to the use of digital technologies in specific contexts. The investigation of these policies and documents is concerned with critically analysing the ethical assumptions and value judgements which underpin the discursive language which forms the discourse of compliance and control.

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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BUR091065   ®

Paper

Aboriginal peoples perceptions and beliefs about quality teaching

Catherine Burgess, The University of Sydney and Cindy Berwick, NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group

Quality teaching has increasingly been cited as a major factor in improving student outcomes at school. Certainly, the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) has invested extensively in the notion of quality teaching. The implementation of the Quality Teaching Framework and organisation of numerous professional learning opportunities for teachers remains a major theme.

For Aboriginal* students whose educational disadvantage is generally higher than any other student group, quality teaching takes on greater importance as a potentially key strategy in bridging the achievement gap. Significantly, the Report of the Review of Aboriginal Education (AER) cited the work of teachers as the 'make or break' element in improving Aboriginal student outcomes (NSW DET & NSW AECG, 2004, p 189).

The NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) has subsequently undertaken a research project to elucidate Aboriginal parents and community member's perceptions and beliefs about quality teaching. The project aimed to find out what aspects of quality teaching make a difference to Aboriginal student outcomes. Using a mixed methods approach of workshops, focus groups, surveys and interviews, parents and community members were asked to identify key issues around the notion of quality teaching. Additionally, members were asked to rank the NSW Institute of Teachers' Professional Teaching Standards and statements on quality teaching from the AER.

Preliminary findings have indicated that Aboriginal parents and community members believe that above all teachers need to understand, know and build trust relationships with their students. Crucial to this, is the individual teacher's knowledge and understanding of Aboriginal culture, particularly local community culture. Authentic engagement with student's families and the community is seen as essential to building this trust and learning about local culture. From their own school experiences, Aboriginal parents identified that it was a particular teacher; their personality rather than their knowledge of curricular and the way that they taught, that gave them a sense of belonging and feeling of worthiness to continue with their education.

This paper seeks to present the research project findings including implications for Professional Teaching Standards, teacher education training and current approaches to teacher professional learning.

* Note: the terminology Aboriginal is used in recognition of original land ownership in NSW and is inclusive of Torres Strait Islander students (as per NSW AECG and DET policies).

Key Phrase:    Indigenous Education

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BUR091104   ®

Paper

What good a national curriculum for Indigenous students?

Catherine Burgess, The University of Sydney

This paper seeks to question the relevance of a national curriculum to Indigenous education. If it doesn't significantly contribute to bridging the achievement gap for Indigenous students or seek to acknowledge the centrality of Indigenous knowledges, histories and cultures in the core content and the spirit of the curriculum, then it is difficult to imagine any additional benefits to Indigenous and indeed non-Indigenous students than what is currently on offer.

The National Curriculum Board began its work in 2008 buoyed by a rare alignment of state and federal party politics. 'The Shape of the National Curriculum: A Proposal for Discussion' followed by 'Framing Papers' in English, History, Mathematics and the Sciences were published for consultation at mainly 'invitation only' forums and for general public submission within a relatively short timeframe. For Indigenous parents and community members, grass roots consultation is the cornerstone of decision-making, so this process alienated those already struggling to be heard by largely unresponsive systems. The lack of inclusion in any significant way prior to submission dates, despite 'diversity' rhetoric within the documents, has resulted in deep suspicion of the processes and their products. It also raises valid questions about the commitment of resources to yet another layer of education bureaucracy.

Further, there have been numerous reports around issues of Indigenous disadvantage since the beginning of this century. The crucial role of education in addressing this disadvantage has been consistently identified in one way or another. The role of the teacher, their relationship with student's families and how they teach is frequently cited as the key to bridging the disadvantage gap. Any mention of curriculum is a call for the deeper inclusion of Indigenous histories and cultures. The introduction of a National Curriculum has not been identified as contributing to solutions, and by the processes employed and the products created, this position appears well founded.

More recently, attempts to include Indigenous voices have been welcomed, but is it too little too late? Can truly inclusive curricular that engages Indigenous viewpoints and expands understanding and acceptance of diversity be developed after the groundwork and indeed the decision to have a national curriculum has been made?

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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BUT091281

Paper

Community engagement and transformational education

Jude Butcher, Luke Egan and Peter Howard, Australian Catholic University

In working with people and communities, education is a major force for bringing about positive transformations. There are many reasons why this is so. Education means knowledge, skills, intellectual stimulation, social interaction, and entertainment. Along with these more specific benefits, it is argued that increased hope is a general, underlying benefit of education, and one that is especially relevant to the community engagement mission. When educational initiatives help to create more hopeful communities, community members can benefit in ways that stretch far beyond the positive outcomes typically associated with education. Enhanced hope in the educational sphere translates into broader increases in hope throughout one's entire life. This paper gives examples of community engagement and transformative educational experiences that aim to empower people and communities who have experienced disadvantage, and, in the process, to increase their levels of hope. It is argued that education is a key process in any effort to engage with communities, not only because of its specific benefits, but because it builds and promotes hope.

Key Phrase:   Social Justice

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CAV091057   ®

Paper

Quantifying student engagement in classroom learning: Student learning capabilities and the expectations of their learning

Robert Cavanagh and Penelope Kennish, Curtin University of Technology

This paper reports on a quantitative investigation of secondary school student engagement in classroom learning. The empirical investigation was informed by a theoretical model in which student engagement in classroom learning was viewed as a function of student capability for learning and the expectations placed on their learning. The investigation was part of the second phase in a large scale ARC Linkage project. The first phase focussed on epistemological issues in defining student engagement in classroom learning. The second phase used interviews to collect qualitative and quantitative data from a representative sample of Western Australian secondary school students. The third phase currently underway is applying a self-report rating scale instrument to collect data from a large number of students to enable analysis of interactions between engagement variables.

In Phase Two, a researcher-completed rating scale instrument was developed using operational definitions of constructs identified in Phase One. The instrument was administered by two researchers to rate 195 secondary students on aspects of their engagement in classroom learning. Data on five aspects of student capability for learning and six aspects of expectations of student learning were tested separately against the Rasch Rating Scale Model. For this study, data on these two constructs were analysed separately. This was notwithstanding that a conjoint analysis was possible and that this procedure has been used to investigate the engagement of particular groups of students (e.g. LOTE students). Testing data-to-model fit using RUMM20220 estimated or generated summary test-of-fit statistics, category probability curves/threshold locations, individual item fit statistics, item characteristic curves/differential item functioning, person-item threshold distributions, and Varimax location loadings from factor analysis of residuals.

The rationales for the RUMM2020 estimates are explained and the results are used to confirm the compliance of data with the requirements for objective measurement that underpin the Rasch Rating Scale Model. In this way, the resulting measures are considered to manifest the latent trait of student engagement in classroom learning.

Key Phrase   Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation

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CAV091298   ®

Paper

Applying a unified theory of validity: Identifying evidence for validity arguments in an investigation of student engagement in classroom learning

Robert Cavanagh, Curtin University of Technology

Conceptions of validity have evolved from a criterion-based view in which a test was considered valid if it's performance was commensurate with the task or ability of interest, to a content-based approach with focus on the test's content domain (the substance). Next was the notion of construct validity with emphasis on the psychological quality of interest (a construct). Eventually, this multiple-type conception of validity was subsumed into a unified view in which types of validity were re-conceptualised as aspects of evidence for an overall judgment about construct validity. A validity argument is based on analysing multiple forms of evidence rather than on features of the instrument.

The theoretical framework for the study reported in this paper comprised the seven-aspects of validity evidence identified by Wolfe and Smith (2007a and 2007b). These were the content aspect, the substantive aspect, the structural aspect, the generalisability aspect, the external aspect, the consequential aspect and the interpretability aspect. The seven aspects were applied as criteria for examining examples of validity evidence in records and reports of an empirical investigation into student engagement in classroom learning. This investigation used a variety of methods including Rasch Rating Scale Model analysis (Andrich, 1978a, 1978b and 1978c). The objective of the current study was to ascertain what types of validity evidence could be identified from accounts of the engagement investigation, particularly evidence produced by application of the RUMM2020 computer program (Andrich, Sheridan, Lyne and Luo, 2003). Identifying examples of evidence was significant because it provided a vehicle for examining the utility of the Wolfe and Smith (2007a and 2007b) framework in identifying examples of validity evidence.

The paper presents a summary of the student engagement investigation including research activities and results of data analyses. Next the activities and findings were appraised as examples of validity evidence using the Wolfe and Smith (2007a and 2007b) framework. Of particular interest were the statistics and displays generated by RUMM2020.

The study identified examples of all seven aspects of validity evidence in the engagement investigation. In turn, the activities and results of the engagement study exemplified the theorised aspects of validity evidence. Using the validity evidence framework to support arguments about validity during research design and after research completion was shown worthwhile. Selecting a measurement model that can test the data conforms to theoretical expectations was also seen as important.

Key Phrase:   Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation

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CHA091138

Paper

A case study of 3D digital multimodal narrative pedagogy

Paul Chandler, University of New England

The world in which students inhabit is increasingly digital, multimedia and online. A multimedia writing pedagogy is urgently needed to prepare students to be effective authors and participants in such a world. This paper reports on a study which has sought answers to questions surrounding the nature of a multimodal narrative authoring pedagogy in the middle years of schooling and how can teachers develop their understandings of multimodal authoring software and extend their pedagogy. This case study of a number of middle years classes identifies areas for development fully realise the potential for renovating literacy pedagogy for the digital multimedia age.

Key Phrase:    English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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CHA091229

Paper

Learner's conceptions of computing: Approaches and possibilities

Paul Chandler, University of New England

Over the last 25 years or so, there has been a major shift in science education attributable to science educators taking constructivist ideas seriously. This paper argues that whilst computers have been increasingly used in classrooms over this same period, and there have been some efforts to portray learner's understandings of computing concepts, remarkably little attention has been paid to how people learn information technology from the point of view cognitive development. A number of approaches for understanding learner's conceptions of information technology are presented, and it is suggested that our research and pedagogy could be greatly enriched by making learners' conceptions of information technology the object of study. In that way, it may be that the trajectory of science education may provide some insights for those of us who teach information technology.

Key Phrase:   Science and ICT Education

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CHE091372

Paper

Hope and educational leadership: A case study of Senior L/earning reform in Queensland

Michael Singh, Xiafang Chen and Bobby Harreveld, University of Western Sydney

The purpose of this paper is to identify leadership qualities involved in reform of Senior L-earning through the introduction of vocational education and training in schools (VETiS). This research is situated in relation to the current literature theorising hope and its relationship with leadership. A case study methodology is used. The data analysis begins with an examination of the five leadership capabilities identified in Queensland's Leadership Matters which are interpreted in terms of the theoretical dimensions of hope. Further, given that this Senior L/earning reform is multi-layered and cross-sectoral, interviews have been conducted with educational and training leaders at the school, regional and State levels, along with officials in registered training organisations and technical colleges. Data from interviews with 40 leaders in Queensland have been analysed with the aid of NVivo and explored for what they reveal about the concept of hope as a defining attribute of leadership, especially in times of significant cultural change. The data analysis focuses its theorisation on the issues leaders meet, the solutions they pursue, the qualities they display in the process of reform Senior L/earning through VETiS. This paper concludes with a discussion of the value of theorising educational leadership from the perspective of hope, rather than just mentioning it as is often the case.

Key Phrase: Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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CLE091571   ®

Paper

Polarising narrative and paradigmatic ways of knowing: Exploring the spaces through narrative, stories and reflections of personal transition.

David Cleaver, University of Southern Queensland

During my doctoral research journey, I focused on what I saw as the problematic paradox of subjectivity and objectivity in the process of formal, academic inquiry. Somehow, I could not divorce the intellectual exploration of the issues raised - with how subjectivity and objectivity questions related to my deeper life perspectives and way of experiencing the world. As I continued to study my own perspectives and the ideas of others in the academic literature, I saw that the division between subjectivity and objectivity were extensions of two distinct ways of looking and perceiving 'reality'. One was based on 'looking into the self' and the other looked 'into the world'.

It was at an important research moment of 'looking into the world' that I discovered Jerome Bruner's (1986) perception that there are two separated cognitive modes - a paradigmatic and a narrative 'way of construing reality'. I resonated with this idea and in an epiphanic and transformative moment, made a meaningful connection to the two modes and recognized them as correlating with my particular paradoxical 'objective' and 'subjective' ways of perceiving.

This paper is a narrative self-study that takes the form of storied reflections of perspectives that occurred during my doctoral research journey and also subsequently developing viewpoints. I use an 'arts-based' approach advocated by Barone and Eisner (1997) as I seek the potentially different and valuable kinds of narrative understanding and meanings that are contrasted with those generated by paradigmatic analysis (Barone, 2000; Kilbourne, 2001; Polkinghorne, 1988). The writing seeks to promote narrative methods whilst illuminating my personal academic journey and engagement with the 'spaces' between ways of knowing. I move between third and first person writing in order to highlight and further explore these spaces.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium, BAG091486 Navigating the complex journey of"becoming"an academic: Insights from six academics at a regional university.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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COL09069

Paper

The professional identity of relief teachers

Dawn Colcott, Victorian Institute of Teaching

Teachers working in casual relief and emergency positions (CRTs) struggle to establish an identity within the profession. The nature of their work and professional isolation often means that they are marginalised by their colleagues and perceived to be a 'lesser' group of teachers. While this view of CRTs may have been justified in the past, CRTs deserve to be respected as members of the profession because all teachers registered in Victoria are now required to meet and maintain professional standards. However, the perennial issue of access to available and appropriate professional development so that CRTs can maintain their professional knowledge and practice as defined by the standards, remains. CRTs in Victoria are poorly served for professional development. In part this is because there is no centralised system of employment for CRTs and school sector authorities devolve responsibility to individual schools. This has led to a situation where there is little recognition that anyone other than the individual CRTs has a stake in their continuing professional learning. When the emphasis placed on sector and school directed professional development for teaching staff is considered, the lack of support for CRTs is extraordinary. After all, they teach the same children.

This paper outlines the work of the Victorian Institute of Teaching in developing support structures and negotiating opportunities for the professional development of CRTs. Focus will be on initial identification of the professional learning needs of CRTs and the subsequent work to provide for these. Institute seminars have been used to bring CRTs together and initiate CRT networks. The Institute has facilitated links between networks and schools willing to support the professional learning of CRTs. This paper will discuss examples of where this has been successful, the resulting benefit for all involved and the value of this approach in fostering a pro-active and professionally relevant learning community for CRTs.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 23, COS091210 Supporting teacher professional learning - the Victorian experience

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Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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COS09071

Paper

Testing teachers in trying times

Fran Cosgrove, Victorian Institute of Teaching

National Partnerships agreed to and supported by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) recognise the importance of quality teaching in achieving positive educational outcomes for children. In scrutinising the quality of teaching, focus has moved to the assessment of teacher effectiveness. The Victorian Institute of Teaching undertakes an assessment of beginning teachers that seeks assurance of competence against standards of professional practice. The recently released Inquiry into Effective Strategies for Teacher Professional Learning undertaken by the Education and Training Committee of the Parliament of Victoria suggests that the Institute needs to adopt a more rigorous process to assess beginning teachers against the standards and this should include the use of external assessment.

Within the background of the national agenda, this paper explores the premise that processes used by the Institute require greater external assessment to strengthen their validity. It evaluates the current school-based recommendation process used by the Victorian Institute of Teaching to determine whether provisionally registered teachers meet standards of professional practice. It also analyses external assessment of teacher practice used in other Australian states and overseas in relation to the Victorian model for provisionally registered teachers. Of particular focus will be the importance of both process and outcome in a regulatory environment and how assessment of teacher performance supports and promotes learning.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 23, COS091210 Supporting teacher professional learning - the Victorian experience.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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COW09040

Paper

How important is school attendance?

Wendy Cowey, Bruce Dunn, Jenni Wolgemuth and Helen Harper, Charles Darwin University

Low literacy results for Indigenous students as reported, for example, in the 2008 National Assessment Program, are a cause for concern for all educators. That only 49.2% of Year 7 students in very remote schools across Australia reached benchmark levels in this assessment has grave implications for these students who are so far advanced in school years without acquiring even basic levels of literacy. Because learning the skills of literacy is such a fundamental part of participation in Australian society, adults without these skills are marginalised.

It is human nature (Garfinkel, 1984; Bruner, 1986) to search to explain why such situations exist in societies. In this case, the most obvious and publicly accepted reason for low literacy results for Indigenous students is school attendance.

There are other reasons commonly posited such as the non-English speaking background of the students, that they have been brought up in another culture, and so on, but the argument most evident at the moment is attendance.

It is such an obvious and seemingly reasonable accounting for lack of progress in literacy that, in some instances, welfare payments have been linked to whether or not families send their children to school. If they don't send their children to school, the argument goes, how can we teach them? Having accounted so reasonably for the status quo, all concerned citizens can feel at ease knowing that an untenable situation is under control.

In this paper, however, we argue that using attendance as an 'accounting' for low literacy results renders invisible the role of pedagogy in student achievement. By placing blame on parents for their children's poor literacy achievement this entire group of students are positioned as 'other' to the normal, reasonable scheme of things. The marginalisation of this entire group of students is thus perceived as excusable.

We will argue therefore, that pedagogy is more important than attendance. We discuss data collected by the National Accelerated Literacy Program that have found a very weak correlation between attendance and literacy achievement. In fact, there are students in our schools whose attendance is extremely regular but whose literacy results are still distressingly poor.

We will then make visible what has been rendered largely invisible in the argument about low literacy results and discuss what is possible when good pedagogy such as that used in Accelerated Literacy teaching is employed by competent teachers.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 10, HAR091090 Getting education to work for marginalised students and in marginal contexts: what does it actually take?

Key Phrase:   Indigenous Education

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CRA09995

Paper

Researching the public purposes of education in Australia: The results of a national survey of primary school principals

Neil Cranston, University of Queensland, Jack Keating, University of Melbourne, Bill Mulford, University of Tasmania and Alan Reid, University of South Australia

Historically, Australian schools have been seen as central to nation building. That is, as well as enhancing the life chances of individuals, schooling has had a number of public purposes that advance the interests of the society as a whole. However, in response to a variety of national and international forces, in the early part of the 21st century understanding around what is meant by public purposes has become less clear. Indeed, while there continues to be considerable investment of public funds in Australian schools, there are questions as to how schools today are serving public purposes.

This paper reports on an ARC-Linkage project (in partnership with the Australian Government Primary Principals' Association (AGPPA) and the Education Foundation) looking into such questions, focusing on primary schools in particular. Our 2007 AARE Conference paper set out the conceptual and theoretical framework for the research. Labaree's (1997) notions contributed to the theoretical base of our work, considering purposes such as democratic equality, social efficiency and social mobility. Our 2007 paper also described some of the early findings from policy and document analyses and interviews with key stakeholders, such as education system authorities, professional associations, business councils, unions and parent bodies.

The focus of this paper is on the first wave of results from a national survey of primary schools in Australia. The survey was developed from the earlier conceptual and analytical work outlined above undertaken in 2007 and 2008. The 2009 survey comprised 71 items of a closed format and 3 items of an open-ended format. Eight of the items addressed demographic information. The set of closed items required participants to identify firstly the importance they ascribed to particular purposes of education and how they could be enacted on five-point scales, then secondly to rate the degree to which they believed these purposes were actually enacted in their particular school. The open-ended items allowed respondents to expand on a range of matters, including any particular facilitators and barriers they saw for schools in achieving public purposes.

The national survey was distributed in electronic format through membership databases provided by AGPPA. In all, 1025 responses were received. The paper will provide a discussion of some of the key findings from the survey and raise some implications and possible recommendations flowing from these.

Key Phrase:    Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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CRE091216

Paper

Beginning teachers as innovative beginning researchers

Marty Crerar, University of Melbourne

This paper outlines doctoral research that was conducted on beginning teaching by a beginning teacher. Set in Tasmania, in 2000, the research project explored one Drama teacher's first year in the profession. This is my story. I was the teacher, and I was the researcher. The research method was autoethnography (Bochner & Ellis, 2002; Ellis, 1997; Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Gergen & Gergen, 2002; Reed-Danahay, 1997).

I conducted this study at a time when beginning teaching was characterised in the literature as a time of survival, or development, or transformation, but policymakers predominantly viewed beginning teaching as a problem needing a solution. I found that an in-depth portrayal of the individual's personal experience of beginning teaching was missing from much of the research literature in this aspect of educational inquiry, especially in the area of secondary Drama teaching.

This research revealed the crucial need to 'see anew', when approaching research into beginning teaching. As an autoethnographer, I offered a different way of knowing about this issue. The resultant thesis was arts-influenced. I wrote in layers, quilting my multiple voices (teacher, researcher, woman, daughter, and mother) with the voices of others (research literature, critical readers and other beginning teachers). I argued that beginning teaching is complex; hence representations of it should be too.

Telling my story opened my eyes. I was guilty of holding a 'limiting' definition of 'beginning teaching'. I stereotyped others. I stereotyped myself. I did not see anew; I wanted to fit in and to survive. By subconsciously embracing the notion that beginning teaching is about survival, I limited my ability to learn from my first year. Until I chose to revisit the experience, I had forgotten it. (Re)writing my story offered me, and others, hope.

This paper advocates the inclusion of beginning teachers as researchers in research projects on beginning teaching. Beginning teachers can and should become researchers of their own experiences. There are regular pleas for more voices of beginning teachers in the arena of research, as well as recognition that research projects are beneficial in teacher training and the sustenance of professionalism in beginning teachers. My doctoral research illustrates that beginning teachers can be at the centre of discussions about the experience of beginning teaching. I provide a model of how beginning teachers can be credible and innovative researchers of this stalwart topic of educational research.

Key Phrase:    Doctoral Education Research

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CRO091370   ®

Paper

Monolingual literacy in multilingual contexts

Russell Cross, Melbourne Graduate School of Education

The current context for educational policy and practice in Australia is one where the predominant understanding of literacy is essentially monolingual in orientation; that is, an understanding of literacy around a common language with an emphasis on universal, normative"standards"and"benchmarks", than a recognition of greater diversity and difference. This paper reports on the first stage of a larger project that sought to problematise these dominant notions of literacy by asking, instead,"what does it mean to 'teach literacy' when students already come to the teaching/learning relationship with a language other than English?"Specifically, the focus concerns teachers working with bilingual and multilingual students in their early stages of acquiring English as a second language (ESL), and thus acknowledges the increasingly diverse social, linguistic, and cultural profile of students who make up contemporary Australian classrooms, as well as the varying degrees of communicative competence these students bring to the mainstream in their use of English as a second language. The discussion draws on data from a larger study on the sociocultural construction of teachers' professional knowledge in multilingual pedagogical contexts, which includes data from observational case studies of teacher practice and surveys of English second language teachers in Melbourne metropolitan schools. The focus of the analysis in present paper, however, are the themes to emerge from the interview data with teachers on their understanding of literacy within such contexts.

Key Phrase:   English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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CUI091373

Paper

Organisational innovations in senior L/earning: An exploration of the 'hub and stroke' organisational mode for integrating schooling and work

Michael Singh, Guihua Cui, and Bobby Harreveld, University of Western Sydney

This paper reports on a study of an organisational innovation in Senior L/earning (Years 10, 11 and 12) that seeks to integrate schooling and work, curriculum and vocations across a network of schools. Specifically, it reports on an investigation into the"hub and spoke"mode of organising Senior L/earning through a case study of the Queensland Mineral and Energy Academy (QMEA) and its member schools. 'Organisational innovation' is conceptualised in terms of Kliebard's (1999) arguments regarding the relationship between school innovations and society which links between education and jobs. Kliebard's concepts provide a framework for reviewing the research literature which is debating the possibilities for reforming Senior L/earning through vocational education and training in schools (VETiS), and in particular the German social contract in this field. The research process on which this study is based involves the collection and analysis of interviews with QMEA officials, QMEA documents, the Annual Reports of QMEA member schools and the Next Step Reports produced for each QMEA school. This evidence is contrasted with data from newspaper reports about the impact of the globalisation of the U.S. American financial crisis on employment in Queensland's mines and energy industry. The analysis of evidence highlights the organisation of vocational education and training via the core and extra-mural curriculum, and the key achievements for young adults from Senior/Learning. The evidence from this paper points to the potentialities and possible disadvantages of the 'hub and spoke' mode of organisation for school-based, work-integrated education and training. The efforts to date by the QMEA and its member schools to (re)create work-integrated curricula that offer key outcomes for young adults point to as-yet-unrealised possibilities for progressing MCEETYA's l/earning policy.

Key Phrase:   Vocational Education and Training

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DAN091054

Paper

Online communications: Students' habits and community formation

Tin Tan Dang and Margaret Robertson, La Trobe University

Online communications have been widely researched in different education contexts during the last two decades. Together with the development of emerging technology, educational applications have witnessed a huge change in e-communication modes, from unidirectional to interactive websites, asynchronous to synchronous exchanges, and stand alone to networked real-time simulations. These have constituted a platform for the development of online social life and communities where members perceptively communicate with each other regardless of mutual visibility (Gotved, 2002). The young generation nowadays grows up with those dynamic networks, and it has been reported that they have emotional effects on the users and become part of their daily life. Therefore, understanding current students' e-behaviors and their e-communities is considered to be crucial for designing a suitable curriculum for the new generation of students. Assisting educators to make informed decisions in these new learning spaces is part of the research reported in this paper.

In particular, this paper attempts to investigate the habitual behaviors of undergraduates in Vietnam who study English as a Foreign Language when they interact with a Moodle site during an English course. It specifically focuses on students' expectations and awareness in online communications; their preference on instant messenger and blogging, and influential impacts on the formation of the online communities. Qualitative data from individual interviews and document analyses has shown that students prefer to use synchronous communication modes and look for instant responses regardless of how often they go online. In addition, the shaping of the online educational communities need a lot of supports, reinforcement, and nurtures from the facilitators. Finally, the discussion focuses on a number of pedagogical suggestions and demands for the process of integrating technology in education.

Key Phrase:   English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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DAV091506

Paper

The puzzles of practice: Initiating a collaborative research culture

Niki Davis and Jo Fletcher, University of Canterbury and Susan Groundwater-Smith, University of Sydney

In May 2009 we established the New Zealand Collaborative Action and Research Network (NZCARN) hub through the medium of an invited research symposium and associated Blog stimulated by contributions of a leading academic (Somekh 2009) founding member of the Collaborative Action Research Network. The principle purpose of the symposium was to establish a networked learning community in the form of"power networking"(Castells 2001), which is designed to change the way we perceive, organize, manage and consume educational research within an Action Research tradition complemented by sympathetic approaches, including Kaupapa Maori.

Our goal through NZCARN was to advance educational research and practice in New Zealand and internationally to map the diverse territory and identify the puzzles, dilemmas and contradictions among communities, practitioners, scholars and academic leaders.

It was essential in the conception of NZCARN that we honour the many ways of knowing and being within New Zealand, which is an increasingly bicultural nation, by opening the symposium with the understanding that Kaupapa Maori and Action Research approaches, while different are not incompatible. Within both approaches researchers are expected, by their communities to have some form of critical and historical analysis of the role of research in a range of dynamic contexts and sites (Macfarlane 2009). Thus a metaphor which dominated the proceedings was that of the braided river.

Active practitioners and leaders in action research in New Zealand were invited to this inaugural research symposium following site visits and these leaders were encouraged to identify others, including emergent researchers. The majority who were able to attend submitted abstracts and posters that provided evidence of the range and diversity of their work. The endeavour was underwritten by the university. The organization of the symposium provided significant amounts of time for critical conversation and input from leaders within and beyond New Zealand.

This proposal should not be read as merely a narrative of practice but rather as a means of revealing the ways through the complexities of practice. Each discussion group was required to identify the diversity, commonalities and ways forward. The emerging debates and tensions that crystallized with discussion included: empowerment as a problematic term; the place of critical theory; collaboration versus autonomy; and perceptions of partnership. We argue that the processes that were employed not only facilitated the mapping of the territory but also can be seen as compass that could guide others who wish to form similar research networks.

Key Phrase:    Innovation in Research

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DEH09871

Paper

Challenges in translating culturally loaded words and phrases

Yavar Dehghani, DSFL School of Languages

Language and culture are inseparable. There are words and phrases in one language or another which are closely connected with cultural contexts. Translating them into another language is mostly difficult and challenging as there is no cultural equivalence in the destination language. To make the translation possible, the translator needs to be fully familiar with the cultural load of those words and phrases to be able to find the closest possible equivalent for them. The most commonly culturally loaded words and phrases come under the following categories: a) greeting terms, b) politeness terms, c) relationship terms.

Not being familiar with the cultural background of these terms will lead to the danger of literal translation, which in turn will result in a meaningless or misleading translated version.

In this paper, these culturally loaded terms are discussed and the danger of literal translation is highlighted.

The languages which are used to illustrate the culturally loaded words and phrases are Persian and Azeri. Persian is an Indo European language which is mainly spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan and Azeri is a Turkic language which is mostly spoken in North East Iran and in the Republic of Azerbaijan.

In conclusion, it is suggested to solve the problem of translating culturally bond words and phrases, it is better to explain them in the destination language rather than find a single equivalent for them, which does not carry all the intended meaning. Using footnotes is also another solution, which is discussed in this paper.

Key Phrase:   English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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DEH09872

Paper

Teaching compound verbs in second language learning using grammar-translation method

Yavar Dehghani, DSFL School of Languages

Although grammar-translation method has been disqualified by most recent scholars and although audio-lingual and communicative methods are backed up by many of people involved in teaching second languages, it still seems that the former method is applicable at least for some specific purposes in teaching a second language. In this study, the grammar-translation method has been used to teach compound verbs in Persian (an Indo-European language) to English speaker students. Compound verbs in Persian are like idioms in which the meaning of single components is different from the meaning of the whole verb. Learning the meaning of these verbs is always a challenging task for Persian learners. In this study, two different lists of compound verbs were prepared. One list was taught by using the current communicative and audio-lingual methods where the verbs were taught as a whole without telling about single components' meaning. The other list was taught by using literal translation of the verbs. That is, for each verb, first the meaning of its components and then the verb as a whole were taught to the students. The results showed that using the latter method helps the students learn the verbs faster and maintaining the meaning of the verbs is longer than in the other methods. That is, when the learners know about the meaning of the components of the verb, they learn the meaning of the whole verb faster and easier.

Key Phrase:   English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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DIL091507   ®

Paper

Gifted young adolescents and email: Developing a personal language of self

Lisette Dillon, Queensland University of Technology

This paper reports on the use of email as a means to access the self-constructions of gifted young adolescents. Australian research shows that gifted young adolescents may feel more lonely and misunderstood than their same-age counterparts, yet they are seldom asked about their lives. Emerging use of online methods as a means of access to individual lives and perceptions has demonstrated the potential offered by the creation of digital texts as narrative data. Details are given of a qualitative study that engaged ten children aged between 10 and 14 years, who were screened for giftedness, in a project involving the generation of emailed journal entries sent over a period of 6 months. With emphasis on participatory principles, individual young adolescents produced self-managed journal entries that were written and sent to the researcher from personal computers outside the school setting. Drawing from a theoretical understanding of self as constructed within dialogic relationships, the digital setting of email is proposed as a narrative space that fosters healthy self-disclosure. This paper outlines the benefits of using email as a means to explore emotions, promote reflective accounts of self and support the development of a personal language for self-expression. Individual excerpts will be presented to show that the harnessing of personal narratives within an email context has potential to yield valuable insights into the emotions, personal realities and experiences of gifted young adolescents. Findings will be presented to show that the co-construction of self-expressive and explanatory narratives supported by a facilitative adult listener promoted healthy self-awareness amongst participants. This paper contributes to appreciative conversations about using online methods as a flexible and practical avenue for conducting educational research. Furthermore, digital writing in email form will be presented as having distinct advantages over face-to-face methods when utilised with gifted young adolescents who may be unwilling to disclose information within school-based settings.

Key Phrase:   Information and Communication Technology

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DIN09119

Paper

A focus on opportunities to learn and student engagement

Rachel Dingle, New Zealand Council for Educational Research

A draft version of NZC was released for consultation in 2006. At this time the leaders of a group of"normal"schools (schools that are leading providers of practicum opportunities for students in initial teacher education) approached NZCER to help them design a process to explore the intent of the key competencies, and to subsequently monitor the extent to which the competencies could be enlisted to help students develop greater agency in their learning. Different schools tried different approaches, some seeming to the researchers to be better aligned to the intent of the key competencies than others (Boyd and Watson, 2006).

The survey developed for monitoring purposes focused on the provision of opportunities to strengthen each of the five key competencies, and was completed by teachers and a selection of students from Year 5 to Year 8 in the cluster of schools involved. The findings from this survey suggested that there were strong links between opportunities to learn and student engagement with their school and classroom environment including their relationships with teachers and peers, and their enjoyment of learning.

NZCER had recently developed the Me and My School nationally benchmarked survey of student engagement for Years 7 to 10, providing a means to test these suggested links between learning opportunities and student engagement. A second version of the Me and My School instrument was developed for the younger age groups and these two versions have been used across the normal schools cluster in the last two years. Results suggest that the changes the schools have made to give students greater agency in their learning may have helped maintain student engagement against a national trend for this to gradually fall between years 7 and 10, and a similar picture is seen between Years 4 and 6.

The Opportunity to Learn survey has been used on various subsequent occasions, with item response modelling allowing the initial rather lengthy set of items to be streamlined. The same cluster of normal schools recently completed this more streamlined repeat survey, several years after the project began. The resulting changes will be discussed alongside the results from the Me and My School surveys.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 46, HIP091601 Design innovations involving curriculum key competencies.

Key Phrase:   Curriculum Theory and Development

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DIX091331   ®

Paper

Attitudes towards ICT-based interactions: A Bachelor of Education case study

Kathryn Dixon and Lou Siragusa, Curtin University of Technology

This paper focuses upon describing and understanding the responses of a small case of undergraduate teacher education students (n=30) in a Western Australian University towards a planned information communication technology (ICT) interaction. The research was undertaken as part of an ongoing investigation into students' planned use of ICT in 2008 and required the sample to engage in an interaction with a purpose- built animation. Prior to the interaction the students were asked to participate in the completion of a questionnaire in order to elicit their intentions to use ICT, their attitudes towards such an interaction, their perceived social pressure to interact with ICT, their perceived control over their capacity to interact with ICT and their beliefs and expectations about the various factors that potentially assist or hinder their use of ICTs. During the activity the students were observed and at the completion of the interaction each participant was interviewed. The questionnaire gathered data relating to the Theory of Planned Behaviour in order to determine the students' planned use of ICTs. While the quantitative data revealed the students believed that interacting with ICTs was pleasant, helpful and easy, the qualitative findings indicated that a number experienced feelings of anxiety and intimidation while working through the interaction. Ongoing research will further investigate the relationships between variables in order to determine likely influences on ICT interaction behaviour and predictions of student success. This research reports on the slippage between the students' initial attitudes and feelings and their actual responses while working through the interaction. Implications for pre-service education programs, as well as instructional design which utilises animation and text are also discussed in the research.

Key Phrase:   Educational Technology and Media

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DRA091362

Paper

Story as a vehicle for learning in online role plays: A case study

Mary Dracup, Deakin University

In online role plays, students are asked to engage with a story that serves as a metaphor for real-life experience as they learn and develop skills. However, practitioners rarely examine the quality, characteristics and management of this story as factors in the students' engagement in and learning from the activity. In this paper I present findings from a recent case study which examines these factors in an online role play that is seen as an exemplar and has been run for 16 years in Australian and international universities to teach Middle East politics and journalism. Online role plays are increasingly popular in tertiary education in forms ranging from simple text-based role plays to virtual learning environment activities and e-simulations. The role play I studied required students to communicate in role by email messages and draw on real-life resources and daily simulated online newspaper publications produced by the journalism students rather than rely on information or interactions built into an interface. This relatively simple format enabled me to observe clearly the impact of the technique's basic design elements. I studied both the story elements of plot, character and setting and the non-story elements of facilitation, interface design, communication methods and assessment. The data collection methods include analysis of student emails in the role play, questionnaire, focus groups, interviews and the journal I kept as a student participant-observer in the role play. In evaluating the quality and impact of story elements I drew upon established aesthetic principles for drama and poststructuralist drama education.

Key Phrase:   Information and Communication Technology

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DUB091484   ®

Paper

Strategies to improve reflection, self-evaluation and student performance in an academic literacies module

Cecilia Dube, University of Johannesburg

This paper presents the findings from a study in the form of action research (Robson, 1993) involving the use of a combination of strategies to improve performance in an academic literacies course at the University of Johannesburg. Because the subjects were enrolled in a first-year extended degree programme, which meant that they were considered as insufficiently prepared for university study, writing tasks were based on Elbow's (1997) notion of low- and high-stakes writing. Emphasis was on low-stakes writing which, according to Elbow and Sorcinelli (2007), mitigates the tension associated with high-stakes, stringently marked tasks. The course was assessed continuously, with most tasks being for marks, but the total number of possible marks was deliberately kept low in order not to lose out on the positive effects of low-stakes writing. The tutors gave extensive feedback on each task, after which students could rework the tasks, incorporating this feedback, for higher marks. An earlier study, the results of which were presented at a Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of South Africa (HELTASA) conference in 2006, had shown that making students track their own progress from one week to the next by recording the marks earned for each piece of work and then evaluating and reflecting on their own performance resulted in some students taking responsibility for their own work and striving to improve on past performance. However, in that exercise, the reflection and self-evaluation were more or less voluntary as there was little or no input from the tutors. The purpose of the present study was to include tutor feedback and monitoring in the process in order to assess what effect this would have on the consistency and quality of students' reflection and evaluation of their work. The tutors collected students' assessment sheets after each graded task and responded by giving guidance where necessary. Students' comments as well as any feedback on them from tutors were analysed qualitatively for evidence of improvement in the meta-cognitive skills of reflection and self-evaluation. At the end of the study, it was found that the quality of students' self-evaluation and self-reflection gradually improved and seemed to have a positive effect on overall performance. The overall conclusion arrived at in this paper is that extrinsic motivational factors (in the form of marks) can be successfully used to develop intrinsic motivation, the latter being demonstrated through students' engaging increasingly more meaningfully in evaluating and reflecting on their performance.

Key Phrase:   English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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EAC09034

Paper

New look leaders or a new look at leadership? Re-conceptualising the principalship for the future of Australian education

Scott Eacott, The University of Newcastle

Ironically, the concept of 'educational leadership' is well concealed by its hype, and lies in stark contrast with the uncritical adoption of (new) ideas of leadership and management thought, school design, and the techniques of evidence based decision making. The current task is to take up the challenge of complex social, political and cultural influences, uncertain economic conditions, ever advancing technologies and increasing diverse student populations. In short, our challenge as educational leadership scholars and practitioners is to figure out what our work as leaders should be in new times.

Drawing loosely on the theoretical work of Pierre Bourdieu, and a continued research agenda, in this paper I outline a framework for educational leadership that can be measured, but is not prescriptive. The central argument of this paper is that viewing leadership as a complex social activity that is not directly observable has the prospect of moving scholarship and our understanding beyond the superficial measurement of what is directly observed to a thick description of educational leadership. Such a move, privileges the philosophical and scholarly elements of being a principal over the leadership and managerial. I argue that this is what is needed in the leadership of schools for the future and a framework for preparing the next generation of school leaders.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 9, CRA091083 Educational leadership for the future: What might it look like, how might we prepare for it?

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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EGA091278

Paper

Lifting the veil: The role of hope in education

Luke Egan and Jude Butcher, Institute for Advancing Community Engagement

The outcomes of education depend on whether various educational goals are met. Hope theory states that those who are more hopeful are better able to formulate and pursue such goals; they are more able to identify workable routes to their goals and to motivate themselves to follow these pathways. This paper explores the research linking hope theory with education, and it adds to this knowledge base by presenting examples of educational initiatives that demonstrate the role played by increased hope. By examining education through the lens of hope theory, this paper shows that the benefits of hope go beyond the attainment of specific goals: successful goal pursuit in one area has a generalised effect on hopefulness in other areas. By reaching an educational goal, a learner's overall capacity to continue their educational journey is enhanced. As such, it is argued that hope is fundamental to the education process and deserves further research attention.

Key Phrase:   Educational Philosophy and Theory

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EGA091436

Paper

School Bullying: The Role of Forgiveness

Luke Egan, Macquarie University

Bullying is a serious problem for school students throughout the world. When students experience bullying, they are placed at greater risk of a range of negative outcomes, including mental distress, physical illness, and social isolation. To date, most anti-bullying efforts have focused on reducing or eliminating bullying, and not on helping bullied students to overcome the negative effects of having been bullied. This paper suggests that forgiveness could play a key role in helping bullied students to cope with and overcome the negative emotions elicited by bullying. This novel approach to mitigating the impact of bullying could help address the shortcomings of traditional anti-bullying measures, and thereby improve the educational experiences of school students.

Key Phrase:   Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences

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FAN091516

Paper

Reframing teacher identities: ESL pre-service teachers' perspectives of teaching and learning in Australian

Si Fan and Thao Le, University of Tasmania

With a significant increase in the number of English as a Second Language (ESL) students attending universities and entering teacher education profession in Australia (Ryan & Hellmundt, 2003), the support for them is becoming an increasingly important issue facing Australian education institutions. These student teachers, who bring multi-cultural experiences into Australian classrooms, confront difficulties and challenges due to their language and cultural differences, as well as their status of being student teachers. This study involves the participation of eleven ESL pre-service teachers from the Bachelor of Teaching program at the University of Tasmania. It intends to find out these ESL pre-service teachers' perceptions of teaching and learning experiences in Australian classrooms, and what support strategies are in place to support them. Data were drawn from surveys, semi-structured interviews and focus group meetings. The paper argues that all support models need to be reframed with considerations of the ESL pre-service teachers' perspectives. It moves towards the elaboration of an emancipatory approach which opens spaces for ESL pre-service teachers to re-frame their practices as well as the Bachelor of Teaching program, to provide enriching cultural experiences for all.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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FAN091517   ®

Paper

ESL pre-service teachers: What do they need?

Si Fan and Thao Le, University of Tasmania

Due to the increasing numbers in the English as a Second Language (ESL) students entering education institutions in their goal to be professional teachers, universities and teacher education programs are under pressure to accommodate and provide assistance to these students in relation to their significant cultural and language differences (Cruickshank, Newell, & Cole, 2003). These ESL pre-service teachers bring into Australian classrooms a multi-cultural perspective and a bilingual learning experience; however, some of them confront challenges and obstacles due to their language and cultural backgrounds. This study explores the question of what are the ESL pre-service teachers' perceptions of teaching and learning in a teacher education program, and what support strategies can be adopted to better assist them. These ESL pre-service teachers were encouraged to participate in focus group meetings and semi-structured interviews, surveys were also given to them in relation to their practicum experiences. The findings of this study have important implications for both the current and future ESL pre-service teachers, as well as the Australian teacher education programs. The findings suggest more supportive, inclusive strategies to better support ESL pre-service teachers in their learning to become globally acceptable teachers.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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FAN091550   ®

Paper

Inter-cultural learning experiences of Chinese background international students in Australian tertiary education contexts

Si Fan and Yun Yue,

Recently, there has been a significant increase in the number of international students attending universities and acquiring higher education in Australia. Over 80% of these international students were from Asian countries, with most of them having a Chinese background. These Chinese students experience a range of challenges and problems when they encounter a western educational environment markedly different from the educational system in their own country. To complete their study successfully, these Chinese students had to make adjustments and adapt different coping strategies to overcome the language and cultural difficulties.

This study involved the participation of over fifty students, with a Chinese background, from three Australian academic institutions. It has explored the perceptions encountered by Chinese-background students in their study, as well as the adjustments made by them. The data used for this study were drawn from semi-structured interviews and surveys conducted in three tertiary education contexts. The findings appeared to confirm that most of these Chinese-background students are indeed successfully implementing coping strategies to succeed despite the obstacles faced, and some support strategies are preferred and expected in their learning. The findings of this study would assist current and potential Chinese-background students, as well as improve higher education practice in Australian academic institutions.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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FEC091248

Paper

Resilience: A case study of the personal characteristics, skills and coping strategies of educationally successful adolescents

Kellie Fechner, Woodcrest State College

While presented with more opportunities than ever before, today's young people are at greater risk of being left behind: disconnected, overwhelmed and depressed.

As an educational community, we have followed the research trend over the last twenty years and moved away from the deficit model of risk towards a more positive focus on resilience. The next step in our collective journey is to take what we have learned about resilient, successful adolescents, those who thrive despite their circumstances, and apply it to the system at large, in order to ensure improved educational and life opportunities for all our students. Only then, can we help them reconnect with what matters most: their communities, their schools, their families and, above all, themselves.

Follow the journey of one teacher who, in a school where socio-economic diversity and disadvantage predominate, chose to take up the challenge of unlocking the secret to success with a group of year nine students. Working with a class made up, not of the gifted and talented, but of the capable, she uncovered the characteristics and skills that contributed to their resilience and, in doing so, opened a door into the mind and world of the adolescent. Against a backdrop of strong relationship-building that had, in some instances, come at the cost of rigour, this group sets out to regain the power and the balance.

The students' stories are eye-opening, honest and powerful, revealing a series of fascinating paradoxes regarding the ever-present threat of despair and its influence on teenage values, hopes and dreams, and proving that, all too often, we underestimate the strength, wisdom and life experience of the young people in our classrooms.

Key Phrase:   Education in the Middle Years and the Middle Years of Schooling

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FIE091542   ®

Paper

Behaviour support provisions in small rural schools and large urban schools

Barry Fields, University of Southern Queensland

The provision of resources and services to schools to support teachers and students has been an issue for small rural schools for some time. While most attention has focused on learning support, behaviour support is now seen as of equal importance. How schools support students with behaviour difficulties is central to Education Queensland's recently revised approach to behaviour management in state schools. The mechanism by which support is provided by schools is the Responsible Behaviour Plan for Students. Through this plan schools are required to identify the type and range of supports, programs and services to students requiring targeted (10 - 15% of the school enrolment) and intensive behaviour support (2 - 5% of the school enrolment). These supports are expected to include access to a variety of government and community services.

This paper explores the challenges facing small rural schools in providing necessary behaviour support for students who exhibit serious forms of challenging behaviour. Comparisons are made between the supports provided by 10 small rural primary schools and 10 large urban primary schools for students with difficult and challenging behaviour. Differences in the type, number and variety of supports are highlighted, along with a discussion of what these differences mean for the offering of a quality education experience by small rural schools.

Key Phrase:   Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences

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FLE091178

Paper

Second chance diverse literacy learners: Factors that influence their learning

Jo Fletcher, University of Canterbury

The need to enhance adults' foundation competencies in literacy is recognized worldwide (Appleby & Bathmaker, 2006; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2001). The community is interested in improved levels of literacy amongst its members because literate people contribute more to the greater good of the community, both in economic and social terms (Benseman, 2006; Biddulph, Biddulph, & Biddulph, 2003). Furthermore, low levels of literacy are considered to be a serious issue for the development of the skilled workforces (Satherley, Lawes, & Sok, 2008) in an era of rapid growth in technology, not only in the workforce but also in everyday life.

This study investigates literature to develop a framework for understanding the factors that influence literacy learning. The research records the stories of two adult female, culturally diverse, second-chance students while they were completing their first semester of study in a foundation qualification that included a course in adult literacy. Many Pasifika and Maori students underachieve in literacy and exhibit disengagement and alienation at school (Alton-Lee, 2003; Flockton & Crooks, 2005, 2006; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2001). This small study specifically invited Maori and Pasifika adult students to tell the researcher of their quest to improve their literacy levels. The purpose was to draw from the women's accounts implications for adult educators working with culturally diverse, second-chance learners to determine what acts to motivators and/ or barriers, and explore aspects that enhance their learning.

In accordance with Pasifika research guidelines (Anae, Coxon, Mara, Wendt-Samu, & Finau, 2001) as, I, the researcher, am a palagi/pakeha, Maori and Pasifika stakeholders agreed to support the research in order to speak for their cultural communities and ensure cultural sensitivity. Together, we discussed key issues surrounding the proposed research methodology. This included the selection of the research topic, methodological approach including sampling and instruments used to gather the data, analyzing the data, identifying themes and the dissemination of the research findings.

The emerging issues were the cultural capital and life experiences that the two students brought to their study; their goals and motivation to undertake the courses; the atmosphere and support within the courses; barriers to their study and differing cultural practices and expectations within the course.

Key Phrase:  English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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FLE091544    ®

Paper

School based practitioner enquiry as stepping stones to change

Alma Fleet, Catherine Patterson and Katey De Gioia, Macquarie University

With increasing recognition of the importance of principles of adult learning in the shaping of early childhood centres and schools as learning communities, practitioner enquiry is being pursued as a valuable piece of the pedagogical puzzle. Case studies of practitioner enquiry sites are useful tools in enabling educational communities to understand more about the processes which support the effective adaptation and sustenance of practitioner enquiry projects.

This collaborative pilot study used the resources and expertise of an (organisation=SEO) in conjunction with the (university team=U) to simultaneously implement and study a cycle of classroom-based professional learning initiatives. As facilitators in the educational change process, the university-based research team investigated its own work in similar fashion to the site-based research cycles being advocated for the school based teams.

While recognising that learning in the early years is fundamental to later schooling success and employment opportunity, educational change initiatives have traditionally been content-driven (e.g. literacy and numeracy programs) rather than focusing on teachers themselves. Given the framework and possibilities offered by practitioner enquiry, however, professionalism grows through the cyclical investigations of a supported learning community and becomes visible.

In 2008, teachers from thirteen schools used practitioner enquiry methods to investigate questions of pedagogy related to (SEO) priorities and children's wellbeing. This research is subsequently having a significant impact on teaching policies and practices throughout the (geographical region). This initiative is significant in that it increases teacher empowerment and improved practice in teaching teams in pilot schools. Key staff at the (SEO) have identified the significance of this research for them in terms of the potential it offers to explore systemic documents (The Learning Framework and Assumptions of the Early Learner) in practice. Findings also indicate that the roles of (SEO) and (U) facilitators are critical to professional learning through these change processes.

This research is enabling the project team to synthesize and codify practices and procedures associated with practitioner enquiry in order to strengthen the knowledge base and to enable these procedures to be enacted on a larger scale. Recommendations are made for further research into the use of practitioner enquiry to support systemic change.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 19, HAD091177 Researching early childhood pedagogical change.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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FLU091066     ®

Paper

Can new teachers be ICT change-agents?

Andrew Fluck and Tony Dowden, University of Tasmania

Information and communication technology (ICT) has changed society. Yet schools have been largely untouched. For a change like business process re-engineering to occur in schools, it has been proposed that pre-service teachers should bring new ideas into institutions. There are tensions associated with the engagement of pre-service teachers as ICT change-agents. They represent a new generation and schools can expect them to encapsulate new ways of learning, of teaching. However they are apprentices to a profession, without power in the school organisation. The aims of this research were to examine a cohort of pre-service teachers' beliefs about ICT to establish a baseline and gauge their preparedness for change-agency. Using a mixture of new and pre-calibrated items, we surveyed 53 initial pre-service teachers on their attitudes to computers, teaching philosophy, ICT beliefs and both experienced and expected classroom computer use. The findings showed that overwhelmingly, they want their future pupils to use computers more frequently than occurred in their own schooling. The ICT beliefs variable significantly correlated (p=.002) with expected future classroom computer use, but did not meet accepted standards of reliability (alpha = 0.31). This elicited discussion about the naivety of respondents or the ill-formed nature of a common view about ICT-led transformation in schooling. In their prospective training, the group favoured learning about using the computer as an educational tool in the classroom over enhancing their computer skills. This paper discusses how ICT beliefs shape teacher training to better prepare pre-service teachers to become change-agents. One important point is that a common view of ICT-based transformation in schooling has yet to emerge. We also suggest, in a time when curricula are increasingly devised within the local school, that pre-service teachers need to become engaged in this level of planning.

Key Phrase:   Teachers Work and Lives

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FU091415

Paper

The Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement and implication for teacher education

Dongqing Fu and Michael Singh, University of Western Sydney

Australian higher education is now part of changed and changing global community. In the past, one of the problems of international higher education is that different degree structures and the absence of effective credit transfer arrangement make the recognition of qualifications difficult for students undertake portions of their study in another country. With the development of Bologna Process, this kind of problems may be solved in the European higher education area by various mechanisms such as the Diploma Supplement. The aim of the Supplement is to describe higher education qualifications in an understandable way, and thereby achieve transparency, recognition and mobility of qualifications and degrees. This poses challenges for Australian Federal Government and higher education institutions and policy makers. In 2008, the Australian Government launched the Proposal for the Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement as the further study based on the Next Steps (2006) paper. This paper reports on the latest developments in Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement and what this means for teacher education. It includes a policy analysis relating to the Australian Higher Education Graduation Statement, including an analysis of the arguments for AHEGS made in reports and submissions to Government. Through interviews with teacher educators, this paper explores the challenge and opportunities that AHEGS brings to the Australian teacher education.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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FUA091274

Paper

Teething problems of a Masters program at the National University of Samoa

Lafitai Iupati Fuatai, National University of Samoa

The National University of Samoa (NUS) was established by an Act of Parliament in June 1983 and commenced its activities as an academic institution at the beginning of 1984. It started off with only one program, the University Preparatory Year (UPY) which later came to be called the Foundation Program. There was a gradual build up of programs over the years which started at the certificate and diploma levels and eventually ended up with bachelors programs in arts, commerce, education, science, and nursing after ten plus years.

At the post graduate level the development of a Masters program was not realized until 22 years later under the Centre for Samoan Studies which was established in 1999. The Master of Samoan Studies Program is made up of two parts - a coursework component and a thesis. The coursework portion is made of a multidisciplinary conglomerate of courses organized by existing faculties which include the Arts, Education, Science, and Commerce. In addition there are Samoan Studies courses by the Centre for Samoan Studies. The program has yet to graduate its first Masters degree.

This paper looks at the rationale for the establishment of the Master of Samoan Studies program and the teething problems it has faced since its inception. It also examines issues related to student recruitment and numbers, student funding and fees, staff turnover and other problems related to the university environment. Subsequently it provides perspectives regarding future directions in terms of keeping the program sustainable.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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GAL09061

Paper

Massaging desire: disadvantaged students' aspirations for higher education

Trevor Gale, Stephen Parker and Deborah Tranter, University of South Australia

Australia is in an invidious position. Having ridden the resources boom up and now down, it now finds that it has fallen back from the OECD pack in the number of its young adults (25-34 year olds) with higher education qualifications. This, just at the moment when it needs more if it is to remain competitive in the global knowledge economy and when economic modelling predictions are that from 2010 demand in Australia for knowledge workers will exceed their supply. As in the UK, the US and several European nations, the policy imperative is now to convince more young people that they should go to university. In particular, the plan is to reach them early, when they are just beginning to form their ideas about their futures. If the plan is to succeed it will require attracting to university people from population groups who in the past have been grossly under-represented in higher education: Indigenous peoples, people from regional and remotes areas, and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. These are the groups, particularly the latter, whom are often said to lack aspiration (for higher education). Yet aspiration defined in these terms is narrow in that it tends to serve the interests of one (dominant) cultural group.

This paper provides a case study of educationally disadvantaged groups and of enlarging their 'capacity to aspire' (Appadurai 2004) to higher education. It first explores the self-serving bifurcation of aspiration by the dominant and its outworkings in the context of Australian higher education (and education more broadly). It then considers how we might think differently about the capacity of the educationally disadvantaged and marginalized in society to aspire to university. Informed by Appadurai's (2004) conception of aspirational capacity and drawing on the case study data, the paper concludes that nurturing this cultural capacity can be achieved through students' early engagement in real-world debate, contest, inquiry and critical participation.

The paper draws on survey data of 26 Australian universities reporting on 59 'interventions' or programs operated by these universities in the compulsory and early years of schooling, with the express purpose of widening and increasing these students' later participation in higher education. Data is also drawn from semi-structured interviews with participants (program directors and students) in six of these programs and from accompanying documentation. Survey data is presented in graphs and tables, while discourse and content analyses are undertaken of the interview data and documents.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 20, GAL091198 Aspirations for higher education: exploring strategies for widening participation.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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GAR091182

Paper

The professional voice: Teacher unions and the professional needs of teachers

Jeff Garsed, AEU (Tas) and John Graham, AEU (Vic)

Teacher unions are by far the biggest teacher organisations in Australia. The Australian Education Union (AEU) represents 175,000 teachers and associated professionals across the country. Commentators often see the AEU as akin to a blue collar union concerned only with wages and working conditions. The rules of the AEU however, make it clear that the organisation's purposes are to meet the professional as well as the industrial interests of members and to work towards improving the quality of education for all students.

There are few published studies of the role of the unions in teacher professional matters and this presentation will show how, as a union representing professional people, the AEU provides support for members on a range of complex professional issues and contributes to the national debate about the quality of education.

The presentation will describe how two state branches of the AEU [Victoria and Tasmania] who represent the majority of public education teachers in their states are presently engaging with this professional agenda. It will also provide evidence about the way in which members are calling for a 'new unionism' involving broader issues of improving teachers' work and effecting change in educational policy. This call is for a unionism which is 'proactive'; engaging with others in the education and wider community to participate in setting the agenda for education.

Analysis of this focus on teacher professional concerns shows that it involves the same principles of unionism - organising around issues, solving problems collectively, empowering people to take control of their work-lives - that are traditionally employed by unions on more purely industrial matters.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 17, MCC091151"Research for advocacy: The case of education unions".

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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GAR091520   ®

Paper

Can I use arts on my practicum?: Pre-service teachers' insights into teaching the arts in the middle years

Susanne Garvis, University of Queensland

In Australia, generalist middle years teachers (years 4-9) are responsible for the delivery of arts education to their students. Research suggests however, that in-service and pre-service teachers express a lack of belief in their ability to teach the arts. This is attributed to lack of confidence by teachers (Hennessy, 2000; Jeanneret, 1997; Russell, 1995) and previous background experiences in the arts (Rusell-Bowie & Dowson, 2005). Subsequently, arts education is not taught consistently or well.

Beliefs about one's capability to teach the arts are developed during the beginning phase of teaching and once developed, according to self-efficacy theory, are resistant to change (Bandura, 2006a). The beginning phase includes teacher training, practicum experiences and the beginning years of teaching. This paper will focus on examining the beliefs of beginning teachers during their practicum experience in teacher education.

During 2008, I collected 201 short surveys from beginning teachers, describing their positive and negative experiences of teaching arts during their practicum. Results suggest that as pre-service teachers interacted with their schooling context, they did not have opportunities to experience the teaching of the arts. Beginning teachers also spoke of few opportunities to view the modelling of suitable arts education by supervising teachers. According to self-efficacy theory, these negative experiences will regulate the future thoughts, feelings and perceptions of competence of the beginning teacher towards the arts. Findings hold key implications for the long term teaching and sustainability of arts education by generalist teachers in schools. It identifies areas of need and development to be addressed through policy and practice in teacher education.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 25, MCC091203 Who am I and where am I going?: Snapshot moments of developing middle years teacher identity.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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GEI091491    ®

Paper

"Tumbling"through life... and expecting a safe landing: A narrative journey of an educational researcher

Helmut Geiblinger, University of Southern Queensland

This autobiographical and personal narrative is a representation and reconstruction of my journey as an experienced, but less then consistent educational researcher, due to a disrupted educational career path. My research development journey over almost four decades has been defined by seemingly inextricable phases which I have identified as experience, proficiency, and reflection. The narrative inquiry approach used for this paper has revealed that my early career as an active elite performer and competitor provided an important apprenticeship for my current role as an academic and researcher. Clandinin and Connelly (2000) argue that through narrative we can construct and reconstruct our personal and professional identities and in the process begin to understand the significance of particular events.

This paper reveals that the autonomous skill performance I demonstrated as an elite gymnastics competitor was enriched through my engagement in the phenomenon of"flow". The flow phenomenon is a mental state in which a person is fully immersed in what they are doing, demonstrated by a feeling of energised focus, dedication and a feeling of success and engagement (Jackson and Csikszentmihalyi, 1999). From the unique perspective as an elite competitor, I have sought to pass on my practical experience and communicate my knowledge and understanding of skilled performance to other aspiring talented individuals through coaching. In addition, I have provided qualitative evaluation of skilled performance in other elite athletes through judging to the highest levels of elite performance.

In my current role as an academic and researcher in the field of education and human movement studies, I have brought together my expertise, experience and knowledge into my doctoral studies and educational research. My understanding of how the human body functions as an integrated system has informed my holistic approach to research. McAdams (2001) argued that the content of a life story embodies a person's identity and that both develop and change over time. In this paper, I reflect on my research journey through the process of narrative inquiry by focussing on the reconstruction of my practical experiences and knowledge during my gymnastics career and experiences as an academic and researcher. The parallel of performing at an elite level which requires one to intimately understand their strengths and limitations and to consistently train has informed my academic approach. Education can also be viewed as an elite performance requiring the resilience, dedication and commitment I demonstrated as an elite gymnast. This paper demonstrates how my research journey continues to be informed by this early experience allowing me to train my pre-service teachers to recognise and facilitate moments of"flow"and also execute numerous safe landings in their teaching career.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium, BAG091486 Navigating the complex journey of"becoming"an academic: Insights from six academics at a regional university.

Key Phrase:     Higher Education

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GRE09946    ®

Paper

Locating myself in the research

Monica Green, Monash University

Until quite recently the dominant 'scientific' view of social research located the researcher outside the research context. Inherent within this research approach is the supposed stance of neutrality, impartiality and detachment on the part of the researcher, who invariably becomes a disinterested, disembodied and disembedded observer (Usher, 1996). Postmodern approaches to research have challenged positivist research methodologies and its clear distinction between the subjective knower and the objective world as the privileged model of investigation. By contrast, postmodernism posits the researcher as centrally and socially located within the research context. Rather than suspend our researcher subjectivities, postmodernism invites the researcher to become explicit within the research process, and encourages us to identify our subjectivities as a starting point for acquiring knowledge.

This article is a reflective critique of the process within a study into place pedagogies in school garden contexts. It highlights the researcher's initial position of detachment, and her transition towards a more critical and central positioning within the research. The first part of the paper focuses on the background to the study and emphasises the developing relationships between the research participants (three gardening teachers) and the researcher. The paper draws on specific feminist writings and critiques which have contributed to the disruption of dominant positivist research approaches, and explores how the researcher begins to make sense of her 'multiple identities' within the research. Finally, the paper speaks to the significance of how these identities generate 'other' ways of making knowledge in the research process.

Key Phrase:   Doctoral Education Research

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GRE091223    ®

Paper

Discover Science@UWS: Motivating science students to select science as a field to study and as a career

Robyn Gregson, University of Western Sydney

In an increasingly competitive global economy in which Australia markets its knowledge, science and innovation the current and growing shortfall of science industry workers is an ongoing crisis. In a rapidly changing and often volatile global economy it is essential that Australia is able to supply the demand for science workers through its educational systems. The problem is well identified and while plans addressing the crisis have taken some positive steps there is a significant need for further development of foundations for better outcomes in the future.

This paper describes and analyses the journey of students, teachers and academic participants whose experience was significantly enhanced by involvement in the Discover Science @UWS program. In this study, the students and teachers had the opportunity to explore cutting edge science and technology with academics in the Confocal Bio-imaging Microscope Facility. They were supported by a hierarchy of academic and education specialists who also became supported by the student participants. The evidence of the impact on student learning lies in the way the students demonstrated an understanding the cutting edge science.

Key Phrase:   Science and ICT Education

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GRI091596   ®

Paper

Classroom discipline: Another example of world-system convergence?

Tom Griffiths, University of Newcastle

In the field of comparative and international education a major line of research developed from the 1970s that, in its comparative analyses, focuses on explanatory accounts of educational phenomena beyond the local / national level. Broadly described as world-systems approaches to comparative education, this research has been dominated by empirical and theoretical work describing a universal or 'world culture' of education, recently articulated by Jones (2007) as the"global architecture of education", whereby educational structures and ideas are diffused, adopted, transferred to nation-states across a single world-system. Baker and LeTendre (2005) stress that the concept of a world culture is inherently and unavoidably dynamic, bound up in the concept of schooling as a global institution across multiple contexts, such that while local, regional and national factors will almost inevitably shape its manifestation,"the basic image of a school - what it is and what it should do - is commonly defined in the same way globally"(p. 9). In world cultural accounts of the spread of mass education, evident currently in the Education For All (EFA) agenda linked to the Millennium Development Goals, we frequently find economic factors directly and indirectly incorporated into explanations for the expansion of mass education, typically linked to the global conception that investment in education would contribute to national economic development.

In this context, I consider the work of Immanuel Wallerstein and its application in the broad field of comparative education, as a framework for understanding and explaining universal educational phenomena like classroom discipline. This work draws particularly on Wallerstein's argument that the capitalist world-system is in transition toward an uncertain, but potentially more equal, just and democratic alternative; and his work on the historical structures of knowledge and their role in supporting existing or potential alternative world-systems. I conclude by exploring two key questions that result from the use of such a framework: 1) Whether and to what extent national and local approaches to pedagogical practices, like classroom discipline, can contribute to any move to an alternative world-system with a more equal and just distribution of social and economic goods globally?; and 2) Whether and how classroom discipline can overcome the almost inevitable tension of operating to construct and/or reinforce conceptions of"others", which becomes just another way of justifying the inequitable but purportedly meritocratic distribution of outcomes and credentials under our current world-system?

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 22, MIL091207 Complicating understandings of discipline.

Key Phrase:    Sociology of Education

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GUO091408

Paper

Overseas trained teachers in Australia: A study of barriers, skills and qualifications

Wei Guo and Michael Singh, University of Western Sydney

This paper investigates how overseas trained teachers gain recognition for their qualifications and work experience to meet local Australian employment requirements so they can meet expectations about maintaining Australian teaching quality. There are concerns about whether immigrant teachers who have had length teaching experience overseas should be judged as beginning teachers in Australia; and if not should they be able to reclaim their previous level of status in accordance with their work experience and teaching competences. The problem is that it seems that they require local qualifications and experiences. This paper focuses on the problems and difficulties overseas trained teachers face under the current NSW teachers registration and employment process. Immigrant teachers, face difficulties, if not barriers blocking their registration for employment as teachers, jobs hunting and securing on-going employment as teachers. These barriers impact on their confidence and self-determination. Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field are used to interpret the practices of immigrant teachers and those whom they engage. It analyses official documents, survey and interview data to identify the kinds of barriers that impede immigrant teachers in developing their teaching careers in NSW. This paper provides analysis of evidence relating to registration, acceptance, employment and language barriers, the main barriers confronted by the interviewees. The evidence helps us to understand how immigrant teachers think about how they are positioned in the Australian education context. Most of the interviewees were well-trained and experienced, but some could not find proper teaching positions or quit the profession. The paper recommends that professional and personal support could lead to changes so that more immigrant teachers can continue their career in Australia. This assumes that the experiences and qualifications of the immigrant teachers are acceptable and valuable under Australian guidelines.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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GUO091413

Paper

Professional supports for immigrant teachers in Australia

Wei Guo and Michael Singh, University of Western Sydney

This paper analyses evidence of immigrant teachers' needs and the forms of support they receive from various channels. It has two aims. First, to better understand what immigrant teachers need to progress their (new) teaching careers in the Australian education system. Second, to investigate what are sources of support the immigrant teachers can access to meet their needs. The analysis of the evidence indicates that the forms of support occur along three main lines. The first concerns whether the immigrant teachers do or can access enough authoritative information to navigate their way through the process of immigration, registration and employment. The second focuses on the kinds of professional support that immigrant teachers can access from the State Education Departments, schools and colleagues to help them adjust to the new education system and its culture. This includes considerations of mentoring policies and the professional development of overseas trained teachers. Third, there are the support networks that the immigrant teachers access via their peers especially those in and from homeland. These support networks provide access to accumulated knowledge and intellectual resources inside and outside of Australia which brings benefits to Australian education. This analysis of the evidence provides a basis for judging the adequacy of the forms of support available to immigrant teachers to go through various barriers and help convert them into the teachers needed meet the needs of Australian education. Policy documents and interviews provide the evidentiary basis for this paper. The Bourdieu's concept of social networks is used to discuss how the social capital helps the immigrant teachers overcome these barriers.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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HAM091100   ®

Paper

Continuing the story: A case for a socially sustainable community of practice

Cathy Hammond, University of South Australia

The Australian academic profession is being transformed by profound long term changes. Governance of the higher education sector is increasingly prioritising quality assurance, numerically based accountability measures and results orientation as a way of ensuring a more globally competitive and finely tuned institution. Such initiatives have impacted the work of academics. For some it has meant a fragmentation of academic activity and in order to meet organisational benchmarks, a greater emphasis on individualised achievement. With community, in an historical context, considered a cornerstone of academic work (Churchman & Stehlik 2007) consideration of their value in a contemporary context is important. This study investigates the practices that sustain academic life in one higher education workplace community and utilises the communities of practice model (Lave & Wenger 1991) as a theoretical framework for analysing the findings. The case study is part of a larger ethnographic study situated in an education school, exploring ways in which academic staff are re-thinking and re-shaping their work through the application of socially sustainable principles. Social sustainability is increasingly playing a more significant role in the broader contemporary sustainability discourse, requiring the consideration of values, culture, decision-making and democratic processes of the social systems of which we are a part. Barron and Gauntlett (2002) propose five principles of social sustainability: equity, democracy and governance, diversity, wellbeing and interconnectedness. These principles, among others, are evident in members' descriptions of social sustainability. The findings place agency at the heart of socially sustainable practices, underpinning the principles of equity, democracy, diversity and wellbeing. It is within the construct of a community and members' interconnectedness that agency is experienced and the principles enacted. Connections between community members provided the space for creativity to flourish. Creativity and agency increased the productivity of this community, enabling the community to achieve its agreed enterprise and be recognised in the broader university environment. This study recognises and reinforces the importance of social sustainability in contemporary discourses of higher education and reaffirms the importance of the community as a site for innovative and socially significant academic work. It contributes to the debates on both social sustainability and the sustenance of academic life.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 21, MCC091203 Innovative applications of communities of practice in higher education.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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HAN091384

Paper

Victim, perpetrator and pupil - Teacher perspectives on peer bullying

Helle Rabøl Hansen, University of Aarhus

This paper investigates the approaches and strategies taken up by two crucial actors in relation to bullying in schools: 1. documents indicating school policies on bullying, and 2. teacher strategies in relation to bullying practices among children. The paper analyses the relationship between policy documents and their implied discourses on the one hand and the discourses and understandings taken up by teaches in their everyday interaction with children and colleagues on the other hand. The paper is based on empirical data including surveys among 253 teachers from 10 schools, interview with 12 teachers, and observations among teachers in their respectively class and staff rooms. In the analyses punishment and sanctions appear to work as general strategies of intervention. However, the motives and conditions for these strategies to be chosen and for the ways in which they are realised seem to differ at various levels. Inspired by the philosopher and logician Stephen Toulmin the paper takes its point of departure in a typical school policy document on peer bullying and identifies a legally informed matrix, which points out unequivocal positions of perpetrators and victims. The policy document mixes the definition practices, which derive from the Olweus tradition on bullying research, into a law informed kind of discourse. Subsequently the policy document iterates a formally legal procedure from the domain of law, which includes 1. a description of the perpetrator, 2. a criminalisation of the act, succeeded by, 3. a claim of punishment and potential fixing of the sentence. As the analyses will show the trajectories of teacher participation, as practiced in everyday lives with the pupils, inform understandings and conceptualisations of bullying as a phenomenon as well as their more general perspective on"children-today". Although the matrix of the policy document seems to inform teachers' everyday practise and understanding in relation to peer bullying, concrete practices and understandings seem to be scattered along more contradictory lines running between on the one hand a preference for punishment and a will to reduce the complexities involved, and on the other hand a number of understandings which emphasise the meaning of the social history of the involved school class and of the adult positioning and involvement.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 36, HAA091381 Exploring bullying in schools.

Key Phrase:   Sociocultural and Activity Theory

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HAN091511    ®

Paper

Evaluation of an integrated business course

James Hanson, University of New South Wales

This paper describes and evaluates an innovative business course designed to integrate multiple business disciplines, integrate theory with business practice, and integrate the development of generic skills with the development of students' theoretical knowledge. Evaluations show that: (1) students rate this course more highly than other university courses in terms of student engagement, contextualisation of learning, and development of: generic skills, thinking & reasoning skills, practical research skills and complex problem solving skills, and (2) students in this course make significant gains in their ability to apply multiple disciplines to analyse a complex organisational problem.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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HAR091037

Paper

Assessing the impact of research

Jo Hargreaves, National Centre for Vocational Education Research

The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) is a not-for-profit company owned by the federal, state and territory ministers responsible for vocational education and training (VET). NCVER has a wide range of stakeholders, including government ministers and advisers, public and private enterprises, researchers and research agencies, industry and employer and employee associations. Through the National Vocational Education Training Research and Evaluation (NVETRE) program, NCVER is responsible for distributing over $1.3 million in government funding for research each year. It runs a substantial in-house research program.

NCVER has undertaken this project to examine whether its research has an impact in the vocational education and training sector and if so, the nature of the impact.

This was not a straightforward exercise. There are challenges associated with defining what is meant by impact, with connecting the outcomes of research to policy and practice, and with identifying measures which will provide robust but not unrealistic levels of evidence.

In the context in which NCVER operates, its foremost interest is in applied research - that is research that is funded to achieve a practical outcome related to policy development or practice. One of the reasons why measuring impact is important is that knowledge of how research makes a difference allows NCVER to make better decisions about how research funds are allocated and so enhance value for money.

The approach taken was a literature review that examines some of the issues involved with assessing research impact and a workshop with key stakeholders to canvass the issues. The project also developed a model to help in assessing the impact of research and in identifying practices that will further enhance the influence that research has on policy and practice.

The model allows for identification of impact across four categories: knowledge production, capacity building, informing policy and informing practice. Using the model as a basis, case studies to measure the impact of three individual research projects and one themed body of research were undertaken, from which we get a good feel for the overall impact of NCVER's research.

The case studies provided a positive assessment of NCVER's research impact, with examples of impact in each of the four categories. The project also highlighted the importance of dissemination and knowledge transfer in facilitating impact suggesting that NCVER's emphasis on this aspect of research is appropriate.

Key Phrase:   Vocational Education and Training

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HAR091109

Paper

New leadership models: Global leadership paradigms within local perspectives

Barbara Harold and Lauren Stephenson, Zayed University

Throughout the world, and especially in the Middle East, education reform continues apace and the last decade has seen new perspectives emerging in research on educational leadership (Ospina, 2004). Changes in sociopolitical contexts have required a reframing of leadership (Bolman and Deal, 2008). New and shared leadership perspectives, grounded in an ethical moral perspective (Fullan, 2004), shift the paradigm from one of individual influence and power over followers to leadership as a collective responsibility and as such may prove to be more effective, innovative and contextually relevant (Pearce and Conger, 2003). This new focus invites a fresh approach to investigation of how teachers can share in leading change in classrooms and schools relevant to their communities of practice and local contexts.

This paper reports on current research that investigates how the perspectives on teacher leadership of two cohorts of graduates in a Master of Educational Leadership program align with international leadership models and discusses implications for their practice in the UAE context. Earlier findings have discussed the cohorts' developing leadership identities and how these changed through the graduate program. The researchers' focus has now moved to questions about what models of leadership the graduates are drawn to, how they intend to practice and apply leadership in real settings and what support might be needed for them in their work.

Data are drawn from documents produced during the leadership program including reflective statements of their current leadership views and their own final research projects prior to graduation. The original data from their leadership statements are revisited and later perspectives related to teacher leadership are analyzed to identify what models and strategies are valued in the UAE context. A grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin 1990) is used to analyze data and to identify new theoretical standpoints in the context of current international literature.

The findings of this project will contribute to a greater understanding of what leadership models seem to be most effective in an educational system that is undergoing rapid change. Additionally, the findings will inform the aims and content of the evolving Masters curriculum and contribute to a growing body of qualitative leadership research (Ospina, 2004).

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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HAR091236    ®

Paper

'Now I can talk the talk': Experiences of language teachers as students

Sharon Harvey, Annelies Roskvist, Clare Conway and Heather Richards, Auckland University of Technology

The New Zealand Ministry of Education has identified Learning Languages as a new learning area in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007a). This initiative is aimed at extending and improving the quality of provision of language learning in schools so that by 2010 all New Zealand students in Years 7 - 10 can be offered an additional language (additional to Maori and English). The introduction of Learning Languages (Years 7 - 10) as a curriculum area in its own right has resulted in a growing demand for language teachers of languages other than Maori and English. Existing language teachers as well as teachers of subject areas other than languages are being encouraged to learn and teach a new language. One way the Ministry has responded to this demand is to commission a professional development course in teaching language/s. The programme is known as Teacher Professional Development Languages (TPDL) and is currently run through the commercial arm of a New Zealand university. The AUT University research team has been contracted by the Ministry to research and evaluate the effectiveness of this programme. This paper considers student experience from the point of view of teachers who undertook the programme in 2008. One case study has been extracted from the broader evaluation research to examine teacher experience more closely.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teacher

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HAR091287    ®

Paper

TWICE FORGOTTEN: The 'lost girls' of Sudan and performative integration into Australia

Anne Harris, Victoria University

This paper details the project Cross-Marked: Sudanese-Australian Young Women Talk Education which uses film to offer alternative spaces of self-expression for African-Australian young women to comment on their educational experiences and the value of the creative arts within research and educative communities. These six short films address the inequity of representation of Sudanese-Australian young women versus young men both in diasporic literature and across service providers in Australia. Using a creative/performative research framework, and drawing on the principles of bricolage research and the radical critical pedagogy of McLaren and Giroux, this paper offers an example of arts-based methodologies that can work from within the Sudanese-Australian and education communities, sharing the vital work of addressing racism in schools.

Key Phrase:   Creativity and Imagination in Education

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HAW091467    ®

Paper

Teaching for social justice: A pedagogy for Twenty-first Century early childhood education

Karen Hawkins, Southern Cross University

At the turn of the new millennium there was an ardent call for research into innovative pedagogies that might engross students in critical dialogues where complex cultural particularities and social traditions are investigated, with the aim of encouraging new ways of relating to and understanding social relations (Apple, 2004, 2006; Elenes, 2002; Lingard, Hayes & Mills, 2000; Mac Naughton, 2003a). Similarly there is a need for researchers and educators to explore ways whereby young children's negative attitudes toward difference are challenged and they are encouraged to appreciate diversity (Connolly, 2003; Denman-Sparks & Ramsey, 2006). These challenges, it appears, have been set in light of the fact that, although social justice and anti-bias curricula are of definite concern in educational circles, many educators were struggling to promote such curricula in their classrooms because they were not equipped with appropriate pedagogical strategies (Derman-Sparks & Ramsey, 2006; Lingard et al., 2000; Siraj-Blatchford & Clarke, 2000). These concerns are highlighted through a brief literature review that underpinned the participatory action research outlined in this paper.

Social justice in education is of great significance."In fact, [social justice] remains the central debate in education and should remain the central pursuit of educators at all levels of education"(Sturman, 1997, p. xiii). Indeed, exploring critical consciousness in education is important and should be pursued in educational research (Siraj-Blatchford, 1994). This area of research has attracted considerable attention in the upper primary, secondary and post secondary levels of education (Siraj-Blatchford, 1995). However, while there is a large amount of research regarding young children's physical and intellectual development, there is much less research focusing on their development of critical consciousness and social justice understandings regarding difference, diversity and human dignity (Glover, 2001; Mac Naughton, 2003a, 2003b). This is rather surprising given that the preschool years are critical in forming attitudes towards diversity and difference (Dau, 2001; Carlsson-Paige & Lantieri, 2005; Connolly, 2003; Mac Naughton, 2003b; Nixon & Aldwinkle, 2005; Swiniarski & Breitborde, 2003). To this end the research project reported on in this paper addressed the above gap and examined strategies to enhance teaching for social justice in preschool settings and how these strategies raised critical consciousness in both students (preschoolers) and early childhood educators. This paper reports the major finding of the study (i.e. the judicious use of children's literature is an appropriate catalyst to teach for social justice) and also outlines further results that complement this pedagogical strategy.

Key Phrase:   Early Childhood

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HEL091110    ®

Paper

The trials and tribulations of conducting early childhood research in remote Australia

Janet Helmer, Jennifer Wolgemuth, Claire Bartlett, Tess Lea and Heather Smith, Charles Darwin University and John Ehrich, Macquarie University

A small exploratory study was conducted over a school term in three primary schools in the Northern Territory to determine the effectiveness of a web-based literacy intervention, ABRACADBRA. Our purpose is to inform others of the challenges encountered while implementing and evaluating the effectiveness this new literacy intervention. Researchers were confronted with several ongoing obstacles during the data collection process. Using standardised testing with children who had never been exposed to this type of assessment; working with teachers with very little teaching experience and poor attendance all added to the difficulty of conducting rigorous research. Tests that were designed for whole class administration had to be given one-on-one or to small groups of no more than three. Teacher turnover was an issue as was the fact that most teachers were early in their careers, still developing knowledge and skills. While many of the teachers were eager to learn and responsive to professional development, their overall lack of training in explicit early literacy instruction at times negatively impacted the program's delivery. Greater teacher support is suggested to increase overall teacher effectiveness while providing much needed professional development. Sporadic attendance among many of the participants resulted in the study losing 22 of its original 97 students over a ten week period. Computer assisted learning programmes such as ABRACADABRA, which allows students to pick up where they left off is one way of addressing the issue of transient students. ABRACADABRA, with its multiple levels and variety of activities allows teachers to differentiate lessons according to student needs. Recommendations for other educational researchers working within this or a similar context are given throughout the article.

Key Phrase:   Indigenous Education

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HEN091383

Paper

Bullying, childhood experiences and consequences for later life

Inge Henningsen, University of Aarhus

A socioeconomic inequality in exposure to bullying among adolescents is well established, and although bullying cannot be analysed as an effect of a set of personal characteristics, .childhood experiences contribute to the setting of the social scene on which bullying does or does not take place. Studies have confirmed that the risk of bullying is higher among adolescents with parents from lower socioeconomic position, and cross country investigations have found that societies with larger economic inequality have higher prevalence of bullying victimization. Other studies have considered the influence of bullying on educational achievement and how adolescent bullying experiences influence later life both concerning participation in adult work and social relationships. Exposure to adolescent bullying was analyzed together with a number of socioeconomic measures and the occurrence of perceived negative childhood social events in a representative sample of 3959 Danish citizen of age 18 - 64. Children of greater socioeconomic disadvantage had higher risk of victimization and the same held true for children having experienced one or more negative social events. Since the negative childhood experiences tended to be correlated, a logistic regression analysis was performed to control for confounding confirming that the influence of childhood experiences was attenuated when a multidimensional analysis was performed. The data included questions on the degree to which the respondent had been able to count on his or her parents and on the respondents feeling of economic security during childhood. When these mediating items were included in the analysis a number of factors, e.g. divorce, addiction and parents education, did not have any independent influence on the rate of bullying, while other experiences, e.g. sexual abuse and physical illness, retained their influence pointing to complicated patterns still to be explored. Studies have shown that adults have a wide range of responses to adolescent bullying. In our material victims of bullying had on the average a lower level of school and vocational education. They had on average smaller and more fragile social networks and felt in general less secure and had a lower over-all satisfaction with life. This still holds true even after controlling for a number of confounders, like socioeconomic background, education and negative childhood experiences. The above results are however averages and the study reveals the existence of a large group of adults that later in life have been able to cope with adolescent bullying and create for themselves a satisfactory life.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 36, HAA091381 Exploring bullying in schools.

Key Phrase:   Sociocultural and Activity Theory

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HEY091142

Paper

The adoption of student active learning in Indonesia: A disjunct between policy and practice?

Sopantini Heyward, University of Tasmania

This paper presents the preliminary results of a case study conducted in Eastern Indonesia. The study aims to: (1) examine the adoption process of a legislated curriculum policy; and (2) investigate the implementation practices at the schools and classrooms; and (3) critically examine the conditions which enhance and hinder the process of policy implementation.

Evidence mounts from studies conducted in countries including Australia, USA, and England for the effectiveness of active learning over traditional teacher-centred approaches (Prince, 2004, McCarthy, & Anderson, 2000, Michael, 2006). To change the heavily teacher-centred mode of learning, Indonesian educators have engaged with active learning approach as an imported innovation for over three decades. Whilst ideas know no boundaries and travel across nations, studies of innovation and change highlight the following three aspects as critical to its adoption in a new country. These are: (1) values compatibility; (2) innovation clarity; and (3) supportive contexts. This is particularly relevant in the case of the importation of an active learning pedagogy into Indonesian schools.

Data were collected over a six month period in 2007 in three schools, two in Kota Tidore Kepulauan, a newly formed district in a relatively remote and underdeveloped location in North Maluku and one in West Lombok district, West Nusa Tenggara. Data were obtained through: (1) interviews with teachers, principals, school supervisors and bureaucrats; (2) lessons observations; and (3) document analysis. To ensure the veracity of the data and to gain a more comprehensive and realistic view of policy implementation, a variety of research strategies was employed and multi-site interviews were conducted with bureaucrats from the neighbouring districts of South and West Halmahera.

Preliminary analysis suggest that in the context of a decentralised system, a forward mapping approach, an implementation technique commonly employed when Indonesian education system was highly centralized is still the pervasive mode of policy implementation; this process has failed to accommodate a number of factors that hinder the implementation at the school level. Although the teachers in these schools are aware of active learning, the teachers are constrained from fully implementing the active learning approach because (1) professional knowledge and funding support is inefficient and ineffective; (2) there is a lack of clarity about funding sources and distribution; and (3) of conflicting values between liberal society where active learning was developed and Indonesian communal societies as exemplified in the concept of high/low power distance and individual/communal societies (Hofstede and Hofstede, 2006).

Key Phrase:   Doctoral Education Research

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HIL091540    ®

Paper

Coming to grips with student mobility and policy implications for low SES communities: A case study from regional Queensland

Angela Hill, Fiona Navin and Andrea Lynch, James Cook University

In 2008, in what could be considered a significant shift in Australian education policy, Rudd and Gillard stated that,"'business as usual' in Australian schools will not, by itself, substantially lift educational outcomes, particularly in low SES communities"(2008, p.26). They highlighted the need for schools to not only"commit to excellence in teaching and learning within the classroom, but . . . be prepared to address the range of external factors that impact on students' ability to engage in learning"(ibid).

This paper summarises some of the issues exposed through a collaborative research project with schools related to one set of external factors in lower socio-economic communities - student mobility or movement of students between schools. Taking a policy research perspective, informed by Dale(1989), Rist (2005) and Ball (1994), the paper examines the relationship between 'wider policies of the state' in particular marketisation and considers how mobility plays out in school sites, specifically school sites marked by poverty.

The paper firstly presents an overview of the issues related to the measurement of mobility outlining the various ways stability within school populations has been measured. The paper argues for a measurement tool that reflects both the transactional pressure student mobility creates for schools and teachers but also the complexity conferred by poverty, suggesting that current metrics effectively mask issues of mobility within such communities.

The paper then presents research findings on the work of schools and teachers in relation to mobile students. Through a detailed analysis of this work, actions are located as serving the interests of the state - technical transactions related to the Education (General Provisions) Act 2006, practical requirements related to inducting students to a new school and, most importantly, critical actions related to student learning and support needs. The use of this framework to examine the work of teachers exposes the 'complex interplay of interests' (Ball, 1997) that require visibility within any policy reform.

Using Rist's (2005) notion of research as having an 'enlightenment function' the paper argues that sustained collaborative research with schools can expose the complexities of such phenomena as student mobility. In the context of renewed commitment to 'needs based funding', the paper concludes with suggested directions to support individual case management of mobile students within a social justice framework and a call for the reconsideration of the role of the state in order to reduce mobility in low SES communities.

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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HIP09118

Paper

Meaning making for democratic participation

Rosemary Hipkins, New Zealand Council for Educational Research

Development of items for New Zealand's Assessment Resource Banks (ARBs) is contracted to NZCER by the Ministry of Education. ARBs are an electronic repository for small discrete assessment tasks, typically pencil-and-paper but sometimes involving more practical activities, in the subject areas of English, science and mathematics. Each pencil-and-paper item is trialled by a sample of at least 200 students, typically from around five or six different schools."Difficulty levels"are determined on the basis of the pattern of trial students' responses. Originally intended to allow schools to benchmark their students against national achievement patterns, around six years ago the focus of the whole project moved to formative assessment. Analysis and reporting of response patterns changed to emphasise the way in which students understood and responded to the task (not simply whether they could do it). Thus each item could now be conceived as a small design experiment, with the aim of gaining insights into an aspect of students' understanding, in order to describe possible next learning steps.

The NZCER science team works together to analyse response patterns for science tasks, first reading and discussing a sample of completed scripts, then building and applying a coding schedule based on the researchers' emerging understanding of the patterns of responses. The team typically completes coding by working in the same space, so that any different responses can be discussed, and the coding schedule adjusted if necessary. Students are usually asked to answer three of four questions that together make up a trial booklet. At the end of each booklet students are given the opportunity to make a personal response about enjoyment and difficulty levels of items. Recently created items have experimented with the integration of a foregrounded key competency with some aspect of curriculum content. This paper will present one example in depth to discuss what might be learned from this more modest type of design experiment (that is, compared with the lifelong literacy project to be discussed first in the symposium).

As is typical of science curricula elsewhere, New Zealand's curriculum claims that learning science is necessary for making"informed decisions about the communication, application and implications of science as these relate to [students'] own lives and cultures"(p.28). A newly developed"nature of science"strand has"communicating in science"as one of its four sets of objectives, and was developed with the intent of linking to the key competency"using language, symbols and texts"(Barker, Hipkins, and Bartholomew, 2004). The ARB item to be introduced in this workshop investigates the manner in which these components could come together as students address a task that asks them to"read"the intended message in a graphic text designed to illustrate the enhanced greenhouse effect for the general public. The pattern of responses suggests that developing"using language, symbols and texts"as a science competency, should at the very least include fostering the disposition to ask what each element of the text (shapes, arrows, colour etc) is intended to represent, before beginning to decode its meaning. A further finding is that this item, like other similar items recently developed, provides useful insights into students' conceptual understandings - in this case of the structure of the atmosphere. This suggests that integration of key competencies into well designed tasks could be seen as enhancing rather than replacing a knowledge focus.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 46, HIP091601 Design innovations involving curriculum key competencies.

Key Phrase:   Curriculum Theory and Development

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HOL091496

Paper

On being rural: Identity claims, higher education and the global citizen

Brenda Southerland Holt, University of Melbourne

Unlike other western countries, Australian young people do not have the tradition of moving away from home to go to university; the most common living arrangement for Australians in their twenties is to be living in the parental home (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005). For rural young people accessing tertiary studies, however, staying at home is rarely an option, especially if a rural young person accesses an elite higher education institution. Thus within Australian higher education, mobility is an ontological absolute for a rural young person. Simply put, all of the elite 'sandstone' universities in Australia are located in the cities; in fact, half of these, the self-identified 'Group of Eight' are in the two largest cities of Melbourne and Sydney.

Alston and Kent (2003) argue that moving to the city or a larger regional area for further education is a move that requires an 'emotional hurdle' not everyone can achieve, and thus the gap between opportunities for rural and urban young people continue to deepen.

This paper will examine this gap as a clash of two types of conflicting narratives that were evident in a recent four-year study that followed eight young women from small Victorian towns accessing an elite education in a large city. Jane Kenway's (2006) insightful reading of Australian higher education policy as 'traveller's tales' argues that university policies are written for the 'winners...emancipated from space' as they become 'citizens of the world.' What happens, however, when those 'emancipated from space' want to also hold onto a rural narrative that, in many ways, is in contradiction to the urban university's narrative? In order to unpack this conflict, I have developed two terms that I will seek to explain in the body of the paper: the rural cultural narrative and the urban public narrative. I will demonstrate the ways they are evident in the young women's own renditions of their mobility.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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HOP091312   ®

Paper

Notes towards the articulation of a passionate pedagogy

Lekkie Hopkins, Edith Cowan University

What happens when education-for-liberation discourses of the 1960s intersect with radical feminist discourses of 1970s to meet with poststructuralist discourses of the 1990s in a feminist classroom of the early 21st century? Using reflections on the impact of these discourses in my work as a feminist academic as its starting point, this paper draws on the work of thinkers as diverse as Paolo Friere, Adrienne Rich, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Renee Descartes, Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, Jan Fook, Carlina Rinaldi, and Chris Cuomo to articulate the dimensions of what I have come to call a passionate pedagogy. In recognition of the endless oscillation and fluctuation from theory to practice and back, the outlining of each cluster of pedagogical concepts includes a discussion of the relevant teaching practices I have adopted to create and sustain these ways of working

Key Phrase:   Educational Philosophy and Theory

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HOW091190

Paper

From disadvantage to learning and engagement: Community embedded socially supported education

Peter Howard and Jude Butcher, Institute for Advancing Community Engagement

The Australian government's social inclusion agenda and the Bradley Review of Higher Education profile the importance of transformative education for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. While the challenge is public knowledge the means for addressing the challenge could involve revealing a well kept secret about the nature of transformative education.

Transformative partnerships between Australian Catholic University, communities, local governments, community organisations and health agencies have been foundational to the development of the Clemente Australia program. Clemente Australia is community embedded, socially supported university education delivering key personal, social and economic benefits for people and communities who are marginalised or disadvantaged.

This CESSUE program values and respects people for who they are and for where they are within their individual life journeys. Clemente Australia builds student capacity to be more proactive: to examine, contemplate and question the world around them, and to then engage with it. Clemente Australia focuses on learning and appreciating one's potential and abilities to engage with others. Students are supported in their transitions into, through and from the program.

CESSUE provides access to higher education in ways which enhance self esteem and self efficacy; increase capacity to see new possibilities; develop communication skills and the capacity to work in a group; to provide a wider network of social and community contacts, networks and supports; and, to provide opportunities for increased interest in learning and different ways of learning, including on-line.

This paper presents the roles of the university together with welfare, health and corporate organisations in the delivery of the program. It also examines the contributions of the partnership in terms of quality services, personal wellbeing of the course participants, personal, community and institutional capacity building, enhancing social capital and advocacy.

Key Phrase:   Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts Education

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HUL091235

Paper

Living the dream: Creating and growing a school for gifted learners

Donna Hulsey, ACE Academy

ACE Academy is a new, independent school in Austin, Texas designed specifically for gifted learners. With a strong focus on multi-age, ability-based grouping, a no-limits curriculum, and emotional intelligence classes for all ages, ACE has grown from its original 8 students in 2005 to an expected 80-90 students for 2009.

This Session addresses the quantitative and qualitative challenges of starting an independent school for a special population from academic, business, and public perception perspectives. Benefits include autonomy in designing and implementing curriculum with depth and flexibility, freedom to use and modify proven best practices for gifted learners, and incorporation of non-traditional classes such as Emotional Intelligence, robotics, and chess beginning with primary grades. Observations and outcomes support marked student progress in behavior, emotional development, and skill development. Gifted children grouped with other divergent thinkers all day every day (rather than in a mixed-ability class, cluster grouping, or a pullout program) show dramatically different levels of social and emotional confidence, as well as academic advancement.

Challenges include scheduling for abilty-based, rather than age-based, instruction; finding appropriate and affordable space; determining for-profit and non-profit status and advantages; recruiting and training gifted, visionary, and flexible faculty and staff; funding programs; finding accurate screening tools and processes for growing a homogenous but diverse student body; managing growth; and shaping public perception about the needs of gifted learners in order to market the school and pursue grants. This session is for any parent, teacher, or administrator of highly gifted students who has ever dreamed of creating the"right"school for those fascinating and often underserved children.

ACE Academy began in 2005 with 8 students. In 3 years, the school has grown over 800% and offers pre-K through high school, plus a summer program, testing, and adult education about giftedness.

Key Phrase:   Creativity and Imagination in Education

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IMM091285

Paper

Voyage of the SS Discovery and The Truman Show: Fifty years of lessons in trans-disciplinary curriculum

Wesley Imms and Sally Godinho, University of Melbourne

Transdisciplinary curriculum approaches have systemic endorsement in Australian schools and are recognized as a means of making learning more relevant and cohesive, and of cultivating student voice and civic engagement. Despite acknowledgement of transdisciplinary curriculum being 'a capital idea', its implementation is often regarded as problematic and has been compromised by the 'standards agenda' (Godinho, 2007; University of Cambridge, 2009). John Dewey's 1930s rebuke of school systems for their segregation of knowledge and inability to connect school-based knowledge to students' lived experiences resonates with the demise of the Essential Learnings Framework in Tasmania and the reluctance by many schools in Queensland to engage with New Basics rich tasks. This emphasises that the cyclical nature of curriculum implementation is a matter of historical fact, as are the many lessons history can teach us about what does and does not work in the classroom.

In this paper, the co-researchers take an innovative research approach by presenting evidence from case studies of two transdisciplinary projects conducted almost half a century apart to argue that there are commonalities to which their successful implementations can be attributed. In the first project, a grade two teacher in a regional Tasmanian school sailed her class around the world in a virtual ship, facilitating enthusiastic creative, cultural and academic learning by her students. Illustrated by a rich array of photographs, authentic hand-written 'log' entries, and interviews with class members and the teacher 44 years after the voyage, this case study demonstrates the power of a literacy-arts rich program to engage students in transdisciplinary learning in the primary setting. In the second project, four teachers in a suburban Victorian secondary school implemented a transdisciplinary unit, 'Reality Bite', which explored their Year 8 students' perceptions of 'reality' through film analysis exploratory writing and discussion within the disciplines of Science, English and Religion. Evidence from analyses of video-taped classes and focus group interviews with teacher and student participants acknowledge the role teachers played in opening up spaces for students to ask questions, to explore each others' ideas and to engage in independent thinking. The students valued the creation of opportunities for extended dialogic interactive learning which they identified as enabling them to develop depth and complexity of understanding. In this paper, the content, teaching styles and student artefacts of the two case study projects are examined, discussed and compared to identify epistemological and pedagogical traits common to these successful - but historically separated - transdisciplinary approaches.

Key Phrase:   Curriculum Theory and Development

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JAC091584   ®

Paper

Home educated students transitions into mainstream institutions - Professional considerations

Glenda Jackson, Monash University

There is currently no Australian research literature available on education professionals' experiences with home educated students when they move into various mainstream educational institutions. This paper reports findings from a larger study on the way home educated students make these transitions. Professional understandings of these transitions and other related factors are outlined to provide an initial framework of understanding from which professionals should be able to contribute to easier home educated student transitions into their educational institutions.

Seventeen educational professionals were interviewed about their personal experiences with home educated students who made the transitions into their institutions. These included primary and secondary school principals and teachers, one private tutor and one tertiary lecturer. The types of institutions included private and state primary and secondary schools and one tertiary institution.

All professionals evaluated student academic and social abilities on entrance into their institutions. Most students were evaluated as having strong to excellent academic abilities and good to excellent social abilities. There were a few students who found the move into mainstream institutions difficult, but all professionals identified learning problems not directly caused by the practice of home education. The social problems of a few students were linked by professionals to difficult family situations and family itinerancy rather than to the practice of home education.

There were a number of factors concerning the transition experiences of students about which professionals were frequently unaware. Professionals were not usually aware of family histories prior to entrance into mainstream institutions nor were they aware of the post school histories of these students. Primary and secondary teachers had some similar and some different views of these transition experiences. Professionals were often unaware of the types of curriculum used by home educated students and how these were similar or different to curriculum used in their institutions. They often did not know parent reasons for home educating students, parent reasons for entering students into mainstream institutions, and student involvement and decision to make transitions into mainstream institutions.

By looking at professional experiences with transitioning home educated students and home educating parent and student views and expectations through these transitions, professionals should gain background understandings of these transitions. Suggestions are made providing possible frameworks and considerations that professionals might consider to ensure positive transition experiences for home educated students and for the professionals involved.

Key Phrase:   Distance Education

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JAK091456   ®

Paper

'MOLECULE' ARTIFACTS: Cultural tools for child development

Cheryl Jakab, University of Melbourne

This paper describes the rationale behind a current research project to explore children's 'sayings and doings' when interacting with cultural 'molecule' artifacts. Cognitive change researchers exploring chemical concepts assert that ideas of 'atoms' and 'molecules' have no existence or meaning in the everyday world for young learners (Wiser and Smith, 2008). The project I have embarked on will test this assertion, and thus work towards filling a perceived gap in the research literature. Atomic-molecular theory the most powerful cultural tool of chemistry (and all science according to the great science communicator Richard Feynman), applied to great effect in a wide range of 21st century cutting edge sciences and technologies. It is one of the most reliable, powerful and useful of today's 'big' scientific understandings. It is also a theory that causes chemistry teachers and learners great difficulty (ibid). Contact with this key theory is often considered better delayed until later years of schooling, due to complexity of the concepts involved (Fensham, 1994). When to introduce atomic-molecular theory remains an open question in science education research, and is subject to extensive study. Research is needed to establish today's child's 'molecular' affordances prior to contact in formal schooling informed by a Vygotskian socio-cultural view of learning (1978). Gauvain (2001), taking a socio-cultural perspective to developmental thinking, has called for systematic studies of the roles that cultural tools can have in children's development. She sees the need to link specific social and cultural tool use to the cognitive development it can engender. Vygotsky's socio-cultural approach emphasises that children learn about, and can practise, thinking in activity defined by culture. Gauvain suggests the broad nature of the conception of culture penetrating thinking through both individual and social practices has hindered its application (Gauvain, 1998). She asks for the largely overlooked cultural psychological approach to child development to be systematically studied across domains. To date there has been little attention paid to the opportunities and constraints offered by atomic-molecular theory, as a specific cultural tool, to support and organise early mental development in the chemistry domain. This cross-age socio-cultural, descriptive study is designed from a semiotic discourse perspective (Rogoff, 1990; 2003) to interpret 6 -11 year old children's explorations with everyday 'molecular artifacts', a central cultural tool of the digital age.

Key Phrase:   Sociocultural and Activity Theory

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JOB091184

Paper

Who let the economists loose in educational research?

Peter Job, AEU Federal Office, Wendy Currie, NSW Teachers' Federation and John McCollow, Queensland Teachers' Union

Over the last 30 years, as neo-liberalism has established itself as the meta-narrative through which all aspects of human endeavour are to be described, it is perhaps not surprising that educational research is now considered to be the preserve of economists.

American economists such as Eric Hanushek, Caroline Hoxby and others have produced a wide range of research on matters such as class size reduction, levels and modes of education funding, teacher quality and productivity, student achievement and competition in educational markets. The reported outcomes of this research lend support, so it is claimed, for neo-liberal policy"solutions"to educational"problems", for example, increased competition between schools, payment by results for teachers, less government control of and funding for schools.

The research has been criticised as pursuing"positivist rigour"to such an extent as to"preclude the complex, multidimensional, multi-methodological work necessary to produce meaningful and useable research data ..."What such research leaves out of consideration is considerable, in particular most of the social and cultural dimensions of schooling.

Despite these criticisms, this type of research by economists in education has been enormously influential on both sides of politics in the United States and in Australia as well. Hanushek's work, for example, has been cited approvingly in Federal Treasury and Education Department (currently known as DEEWR) documents and by Liberal and Labor politicians. Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan, two economists from Australian National University, have published papers on schooling which acknowledge a debt to Hanushek and other American economists and which received widespread media coverage.

For education unions, the ascendency of educational research by neo-liberal economists is not merely a matter of academic interest. The educational policy directions pursued by governments influenced by this policy work have clear and sometimes dramatic implications for the working lives of our members.

The paper presented here will examine the research by neo-liberal economists in education policy, considering:

• Claims for such research;
• Critiques of such research;
• The reasons for its appeal and hegemony in terms of influencing educational policy;
• Its implications for teachers;
• The prospects of education research by educationalists reclaiming a significant role in influencing educational policy.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 17, "Research for advocacy: The case of education unions."

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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JOR09958

Paper

The 'framing' of teachers in national ICT policies

Kathy Jordan, RMIT

This paper reports on how school teachers are being positioned in Australian ICT policy. Through an analysis of national policy documents beginning in the 1990's with the release of the Learning in an Online World suite of policies and statements, to the 2009 release of the Digital Education Revolution policy by the current Commonwealth Government, this paper suggests that the common representation of teachers is largely the same and continues to be inadequate. Drawing on examples from policy documents, the paper explores how teachers are usually mentioned fleetingly, are often envisioned as requiring qualities of 'dedication' and being 'up to date', yet are usually found 'wanting' or 'at fault' for their perceived slow rate of progress in the use of ICT in Australian schools.

In the paper, a comparison of this representation of teachers is made in relation to ICT and to learners. In relation to ICT, the paper explores how it is often portrayed as 'driving' educational change, and how it is usually introduced against a backdrop of a vastly changing world, and global economic change. It explores how provision of ICT dominates policy. As well it explores the use of common arguments in relation to use in schools, that while having some shifts in focus and emphasis have remained largely unchanged. In relation to learners, the paper explores how learners, unlike teachers, are usually portrayed as being 'techno savvy' and ready to take on board new ICT's.

The paper suggests that the representation of the teacher, as indeed representations of ICT and learners, have largely remained the same and that these representations continue to be flawed and that more productive representations that give credibility to the difficulties and complexities that teachers face when using ICT in schools are warranted.

Key Phrase:   Information and Communication Technology

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KEN091052   ®

Paper

How engaged are they? An inductive analysis of country student views of their engagement in classroom learning

Penelope Kennish, Curtin University / DET WA and Rob Cavanagh, Curtin University of Technology

This paper reports on a qualitative study within in an investigation of secondary school student engagement in classroom learning. The empirical investigation was informed by a theoretical model in which student engagement in classroom learning was viewed as a function of student capability for learning and the expectations placed on their learning. This study was part of the second phase in a large scale ARC Linkage project. The first phase focused on epistemological issues in defining student engagement in classroom learning. The second phase used interviews to collect qualitative and quantitative data from a representative sample of Western Australian secondary school students. The third phase currently underway is applying a self-report rating scale instrument to collect data from a large number of students to enable analysis of interactions between engagement variables.

In Phase Two, an interview schedule was developed using operational definitions of constructs identified in Phase One. The instrument was administered by two researchers to collect 104 secondary country students' views on eleven aspects of their engagement in classroom learning. In the context of a particular subject class, they were asked about their self-esteem, self-concept, resilience, self-regulation and self-efficacy. They were then asked about six aspects of the expectations of their learning - can explain; can interpret; can apply; has perspective; can empathise; and has self-knowledge. Although the questions were semi-structured, the students provided much rich information on themselves and their engagement.

Data were analysed using an iterative process in which it were scanned, categories were generated, and associations between categories were identified. The eventual classification schema comprised three levels. The first level had three categories, the second had eleven categories and the third had 27 categories. Percentages of student comments for the respective categories were calculated to show common and relatively uncommon examples of engagement. Additionally, the meaning of the categories was explained using examples of student comments. The most prevalent constructs emerging from the analyses were: student relationships with classmates and the teacher; an orientation towards learning individually, with peers and from teacher instruction; and confidence in own ability and own perseverance. The students also reported disruptive influences from peers, teacher alienation and reservations and anxiety about their learning.

In conclusion, the study has provided an alternative view of country student engagement in classroom learning but one which is consistent with extant literature on the phenomenon.

Key Phrase:   Rural Education

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KEN091345   ®

Paper

The engagement in classroom learning of years ten and eleven Western Australian students

Penelope Kennish and Robert Cavanagh, Curtin University of Technology

The consideration of issues related to student engagement in classroom learning has taken on increasing importance in Western Australia since the passing of legislation to raise the school leaving age to 17 years, which came into effect in 2008. There are now more students retained at schools in Years Eleven and Twelve than previously. Engaging these students in learning is of the upmost importance for secondary schools.

This paper presents a hypothesised model of student engagement in classroom learning that is based on the principles of Flow Theory, i.e. a person achieves the state of flow when there is a match in high skills and high challenges. The hypothesised model proposes that student engagement is when there is a balance between student learning capabilities (skills) and the expectations of student learning (challenges). Each of these comprised sub-constructs, of which there were 11 in total. The research sought to determine which of the 11 sub-constructs that comprise the student engagement in classroom learning were the most difficult and which were easier to identify in Year Ten and Eleven students. It also sought to determine whether membership of different groups of students accounted for variance in the calibrated scores (these groups being gender; school year; subject; and whether favourite or least favourite subject).

The sample was 112 Year Ten and Eleven students from metropolitan and rural government schools in Western Australia. Each student was assigned a rating from zero to five by two researchers on each of the 11 sub-constructs. The Rasch Rating Scale Model was used for analysis of the quantitative data.

Firstly, the raters experienced differing levels of difficulty in identifying the respective sub-constructs in the students. That is, the 11 items in the instrument presented varying levels of difficulty of affirmation. Secondly, the engagement scores differed by gender (boys displaying lower levels of engagement) and whether favourite or least favourite subject was reported (favourite subjects displaying higher levels of engagement). The year of schooling of the student and the subject area (e.g. English, Mathematics, Science, and Society and Environment) did not account for variance in engagement scores. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Key Phrase:   Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation

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KIR091444

Paper

The lessons we learnt: the nature of early professional learning for beginning teachers in Victorian secondary schools through induction and mentoring relationships

Jane Kirkby, University of Melbourne

Attrition rates for beginning teachers are reported as high globally, with issues surrounding the acquisition of professional knowledge leading many countries to adopt a standards based approach to address the problem. The Victorian Institute of Teaching introduced a standards -based approach to full registration for beginning teachers in 2004. A school-based formal mentor supports beginning teachers as they collect evidence of the growth of their professional knowledge in order to meet the Victorian Institute of Teaching's registration requirements.

This phenomenological oriented case study examined the nature of the professional learning that resulted from the interactions that beginning teachers had with both their formal and informal mentors. Qualitative data were analysed using the works of Bourdieu and Wenger as theoretical frameworks to understand the nature of learning as a result of the reported mentor relationships.

The participants (n = 8) were graduates of a secondary teaching course at a Victorian University. Over the course of twelve months, they were involved in face to face interviews. Diaries provided some insight into developing collegial relationships, which were explored further during discussions. Seven of the participants remained in the study for the full year and all of these returned to teaching in their second year.

Participants identified both formal and informal relationships, with variance in the quality of those relationships being evident. Historically embedded factors of time, isolated practice, professional autonomy and views of knowledge remained prevalent and impacted to some degree on the mentor relationships and professional learning of all participants.

The results suggest further attention needs to be given to the quality and consistency of the learning experienced by beginning teachers. While some beginning teachers reported strong pedagogical discussions with their formal mentors, others were relying more on trying to access private knowledge through friendship based relationships or clandestine measures. These latter behaviours tend to reinforce the cultural norms of 'learning to teach' identified by Lortie (1975), Little (1991) and Moore-Johnson et al (2004).

Given the investment that the Victorian Institute of Teaching has made in the mentor program as an avenue for improving the retention and quality of teachers in their early years of practice, it is suggested that the findings of this study provide an impetus for further investigation into the school based issues related to mentoring.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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KLE091607 Keynote Presentation Abstract AARE 2009

Paper

Raising the stakes: The challenges for teacher assessment

Val Klenowski, Queensland University of Technology

These are changing times for teachers and their students in Australia with the introduction of a national curriculum and standards driven reform. While countries in Europe such as England, and in Asia such as Singapore, are changing policy to make more use of assessment to support and improve learning it appears that we in Australia are moving towards creating policy that will raise the assessment stakes for the alleged purposes of transparency, accountability and fairness. What can be learnt from countries that have had years of high stakes testing? How can Australia avoid the mistakes of past curriculum and assessment reform efforts? And how can Australian teachers build their capacity to maximise their use of the learning power of assessment? These are key questions that will be addressed in this presentation with reference to innovative research from global networks that have maintained the assessment focus on learning.

Key Phrase: General

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KU09045

Paper

Effects of gender and gender role orientation on high school students' teaching perceptions and aspirations in Hong Kong

Wai Shan Ku and Helen Watt, Monash University

Teaching is a female-dominated career in both Western and Eastern societies. While low salary and social status have been suggested by previous research as the main reasons, these cannot explain the phenomenon in Hong Kong where teachers enjoy high social status and salary. My Master of Psychology research will include samples of Hong Kong and Australian senior high school students, to contrast their gender stereotypes as measured by Bem's Sex-Role Inventory (Bem, 1981), and how these, along with their gender and gender role orientations, affect their views of what characterises a good primary and secondary teacher, likelihood to consider teaching as a career, self-efficacy, and interests in teaching.

The theoretical framework integrates Lent et al.'s Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; 1994) and research on gender stereotyping. SCCT posits that self-efficacies predict individuals' interests and intentions to persist in a given domain, which has not yet been applied to the context of teaching career choice. Research on gender stereotyping predicts that gender and conformity to gender role norms significantly shape individuals' learning experiences, which, in turn, affects self-efficacy (Toker et al., 2007). Recent research in the Chinese context has found that males and females exhibit fewer and weaker traditional gendered stereotypes (Zhang, Norvilitis, & Jin, 2001).We may reasonably infer shifting conceptions of gender stereotypes, including those associated with teachers, across cultures or time.

In the present paper, I report on the pilot study results from 120 senior high school survey participants in Hong Kong. Factor analyses and measures of Cronbach's measure of internal consistency will first explore the structure of gender stereotyped characteristics. Multiple regression analysis will examine the contributions of student gender, gender stereotypes, self-efficacy, and interest in teaching, towards intentions to teach. These findings will have theoretical and applied implications on several levels. First, for the utility of the two underpinning theoretical perspectives to the context of teaching as a career. Second, for the general gender stereotypes held within this Hong Kong sample. Third, the pilot will identify Hong Kong participants' stereotypical important primary and secondary teacher qualities, as well as the extent to which these are gender stereotyped. Finally, which factors most strongly predict to intentions to teach, and their gendered bases, will be explored.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 13, WAT091111 Beginning teachers' career motivations.

Key Phrase:   Motivation and Learning

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KUK091012

Paper

Quality management in schools. The Estonian case

Hasso Kukemelk, University of Tartu

Many educational systems have recently turned to the use of total quality management principles and excellence models to the current needs of society in a better way. A large body of data concerning the use of the Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence Model (developed in 1987) and EFQM Excellence Model (designed in 1991) at different levels of schools has recently been reported (Nabitz, Severens, Wim van den Brink & Jansen, 2001; Tee, 2003; Steed, Maslow, Mazaletskaya, 2005; Svensson & Klefsjo, 2006; etc). The central issue in quality management in an educational institution is the validity of the processes and principles used in implementing such a system in schools.

There is now much evidence to support the idea that successful implementation of quality management systems in schools depends on understanding the need for change within the organisation, the involvement of the target groups and the commitment of leaders. A standard procedure for assessing the situation in implementing the new system or procedure in an organisation has been an enquiry made to all involved target groups by questionnaires or interviews.

All Estonian schools (comprehensive and vocational schools) and kindergartens were obliged to introduce quality management principles starting from September 2006 (Regulation nr 23, Estonian Ministry of Education, August 04, 2006). Institutions are free to choose the system, but all supporting and study materials are developed on the basis of the EFQM model. There were some earlier minor attempts to introduce various quality management systems since 2000 on a voluntary basis in Estonia. The current reform is general and obligatory for every institution. The first self-evaluation report should be estimated at the latest in the spring of 2010 by each institution involved.

Large-scale research was launched in the autumn of 2008 to study the real situation in schools regarding quality management and self-evaluation by the Estonian government. The First phase of the research tended to focus on the results and appraisals of the process in Estonia rather than seeking for reasons or indicators. It will be carried out during the current year.

The paper will analyse the current situation in the Estonian educational system, pay attention to the first results of the new managerial system and estimate the results of piloting the questionnaire. Some generalisations and comparative analyses with other countries will be provided.

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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LAB091239

Paper

Visions of hope for teacher education: An evaluation of a preservice teacher enhancement program in Aboriginal Studies through university and government collaboration

Elizabeth Labone, Janette Long and Patrick Cavanagh, Australian Catholic University
Carmel Senese, DET NSW

The new Federal Government, in its latest policy statement on Indigenous affairs (FAHCSIA, 2009) has acknowledged the crisis in Aboriginal education. In particular the new policy direction emphasises the need to address the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous outcomes. The overwhelming nature of the evidence on the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous educational outcomes, has led the present government to conclude that the elimination of these gaps is a key strategy in addressing the inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia (FAHCSIA, 2009). A review of Aboriginal education in NSW undertaken by NSW Department of Education and Training, and the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group in 2004 had reached a very similar conclusion. Seventy one recommendations arose from this review.
Recommendation 14 suggested a pilot [program] specifically focused preservice training of a group of students for appointment as teachers to locations with high Aboriginal populations (DET, 2004, p 192). The strong commitment of the NSW Department of Education and Training to improvement of Aboriginal students outcomes resulted in NSW DET developing and implementing the Enhanced Teacher Training Scholarship Program (ETTSP. The program includes two units in Aboriginal education, an immersion experience with a community or government agency in a community with a significant Aboriginal population, and an internship of a minimum of six weeks to be undertaken in a school with a significant Aboriginal enrolment, and an Aboriginal mentor throughout the entire enhanced training. The ETTSP is now in its third year of implementation. The purpose of this
research was to evaluate the effectiveness of this program in preparing teachers to work in schools with Aboriginal students. Since the commencement of the program in 2006, 51 scholarships have been awarded to selected final year teacher education students across a number of universities to undertake enhanced pre-service training prior to their appointment to schools with significant Aboriginal student enrolments. The first 20 participants took up their teaching appointments in schools with Aboriginal students from January 2008, 75% in rural locations. At the completion of their first year of fulltime teaching, the initial cohort of teachers were surveyed and interviewed to explore the impact of the program across four key areas community engagement, pedagogy, ability to incorporate Aboriginal Studies into the curriculum and general efficacy. The paper reports on positive outcomes achieved by the program in all four areas and suggests recommendations related to different components and modes of implementation.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education, Indigenous Education

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LAS091458    ®

Paper

Writing together, learning together: The value and effectiveness of a research writing group for doctoral students

Carly Lassig, Mary Lincoln, Lisette Dillon, Carmel Diezmann, Jillian Fox and Zui Neofa, Queensland University of Technology

The high level of scholarly writing required for a doctoral thesis is a challenge for many research students. However, formal academic writing training is not a core component of many doctoral programs. Informal writing groups for doctoral students may be one method of contributing to the improvement of scholarly writing. In this paper, we report on a writing group that was initiated by an experienced writer and higher degree research supervisor to support and improve her doctoral students' writing capabilities. Over time, this group developed a workable model to suit their varying needs and circumstances. The model comprised group sessions, an email group, and individual writing. Here, we use a narrative approach to explore the effectiveness and value of our research writing group model in improving scholarly writing. The data consisted of doctoral students' reflections to stimulus questions about their writing progress and experiences. The stimulus questions sought to probe individual concerns about their own writing, what they had learned in the research writing group, the benefits of the group, and the disadvantages and challenges to participation. These reflections were analysed using thematic analysis. Following this analysis, the supervisor provided her perspective on the key themes that emerged.

Results revealed that, through the writing group, members learned technical elements (e.g., paragraph structure), non-technical elements (e.g., working within limited timeframes), conceptual elements (e.g., constructing a cohesive arguments), collaborative writing processes, and how to edit and respond to feedback. In addition to improved writing quality, other benefits were opportunities for shared writing experiences, peer support, and increased confidence and motivation. The writing group provides a unique social learning environment with opportunities for: professional dialogue about writing, peer learning and review, and developing a supportive peer network. Thus our research writing group has proved an effective avenue for building doctoral students' capability in scholarly writing.

The proposed model for a research writing group could be applicable to any context, regardless of the type and location of the university, university faculty, doctoral program structure, or number of postgraduate students. It could also be used within a group of students with diverse research abilities, needs, topics and methodologies. However, it requires a group facilitator with sufficient expertise in scholarly writing and experience in doctoral supervision who can both engage the group in planned writing activities and also capitalise on fruitful lines of discussion related to students' concerns as they arise. The research writing group is not intended to replace traditional supervision processes nor existing training. However it has clear benefits for improving scholarly writing in doctoral research programs particularly in an era of rapidly increasing student load.

Key Phrase:   Doctoral Education Research

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LAW09886

Paper

Lifelong Learning: The Perceptions Among Teachers of Mukah, a Malaysian Coastal District

Lily Law and Julia,Ai Cheng Lee, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, and Mei Yen Ong, Ministry of Education, Malaysia

In this 21st century, Malaysia is striving towards a knowledge-based nation. Teachers, the key personnel in realising this goal, are being entrusted with this heavy responsibility. This move brings about new demands on the teaching profession. The question is whether teachers themselves are prepared for this mammoth task; teachers must have the passion for lifelong learning in order to promote and impart the skills for critical and creative thinking, and to instil the habit and yearn for self-directed and autonomous learning among their charges. Hence, this study investigated the perceptions of 280 teachers from three secondary and 12 primary schools within Mukah district, a coastal area in the state of Sarawak, on lifelong learning. Questionnaire responses and interviews were analysed and the findings indicated that the majority of teachers had positive perceptions towards lifelong learning. These teachers were of the opinion that they needed to be more knowledgeable than students in this technology era. Conversely, the study also indicated that teachers faced problems and constraints in their quest for lifelong learning. The lack of workplace support, financial commitment, and inadequate resources were some of the reasons cited by the teachers. Major findings of the study will be presented and discussed during the presentation.

Key Phrase:   Teachers Work and Lives

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LAW091365

Paper

Implementing a new initiative in mental health in Australian primary schools

Michael Lawson, Phillip Slee, Alan Russell, Helen Askell-Williams, Katherine Dix and Grace Skrzypiec, Flinders University and Barbara Spears, University of South Australia

Student wellbeing is of central concern for parents and teachers and for state and national governments. In Australia in recent times several major initiatives have been undertaken to address the area of student mental health. The KidsMatter Initiative has been designed to focus on four components related to student mental health in the primary years: A positive school community, the teaching of social and emotional competencies, support for parents and interventions for students already experiencing, or seen to be at risk of, mental health problems. Across 2007-8 a trial of this initiative was carried out in 100 schools across Australia. Part of the initiative has been a detailed evaluation of the implementation of the initiative and of its impact on schools, teachers, parents and students.

In this paper we report on findings associated with the implementation of the initiative. We report on the procedure developed to identify differences in the quality of implementation of the program, including fidelity, dosage and quality of delivery. In addition we relate differences in quality of implementation to a range of qualitative indicators derived from different sources. One source was the data generated by the reports provided by the project officers who worked to implement the program of professional development for teachers. A second source were reports provided by school-based staff about the processes and impacts of the program. The final source of this data came from interviews conducted with teachers, parents and students as part of case studies conducted in 10 of the Kidsmatter schools.

This paper provides a national snapshot of the mental health status of Australian primary school children. It also contributes to the growing body of literature examining the psychometric characteristics of the SDQ in the Australian setting, and to alternative measures for assessing student mental health in school settings.

Latent class analysis was used to identify groups of schools that differed in implementation quality. The profiles of these schools were then compared on the indicators derived from the qualitative data described above. This analysis shows the influence of factors associated with both the initiative and the environments in the sites where the initiative was implemented. The findings also identify strategies used by principals and key teachers in responding to the demands of the demands associated with this new initiative. The findings are discussed in relation to existing models of effective change processes.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 44, JOH091533 KidsMatter...do they?

Key Phrase: Primary Education

LEO09960

Paper

Powering-up teacher professional learning

Carl Leonard, NSW Department of Education & Training / University of Newcastle and Damien Watson, NSW Department of Education & Training

NSW Department of Education and Training schools are delivered significant amounts of funding each year as a tied grant to be for Teacher Professional Learning. Schools are able to utilise these funds to conduct and access internal and external training and development for both teaching and non-teaching staff based on school and departmental priorities including: beginning teachers, use of ICT for teaching and learning, literacy and numeracy, quality teaching, syllabus implementation, career development and welfare and equity. It is essential that schools develop effective procedures for access and implementation of professional learning and the management and delivery of these 'TPL' funds.

Wirreanda Public School is a large primary school located in the semi-rural town of Medowie, a suburb of Newcastle with a current enrolment of 600 students and a committed staff of over 35 full and part time teachers ranging in experience from 0 to over 30 years. The effective and equitable use of TPL funds has emerged as an issue with regard to promoting progress towards global departmental and school targets such as quality teaching.

In an attempt to address these issues, a survey was undertaken of staff perceptions and needs with regard to professional at the commencement of the 2009 academic year. Results of this survey showed clear discrepancies in staff satisfaction with access, quality and sharing of professional learning opportunities. This data was then used to devise a new structure for the delivery of TPL at the school, a coordination role for TPL management, timetables for feedback sessions from attendees at professional learning activities, and the assessment of the perceived value of potential activities against specific school targets. A follow-up survey is planned for early Term 4 to assess the impact of these new structures.

The paper will present the results of this professional learning action research and attempt to identify some of the structures, pedagogical practices and learning designs that may assist in the effective use of professional learning funds, including a structured, ongoing and hierarchical model of staff professional development around quality teaching, and strategies for setting and achieving personal professional learning goals.

Key Phrase:   Schools Research Showcase

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LEO091208

Paper

The implementation of the Eat Well Be Active policies: Stories from the ground

Anthony Leow, Doune Macdonald and Louise McCuaig, The University of Queensland

The Eat Well Be Active (EWBA) - Healthy Kids for Life Action Plan (Queensland Government, 2005) was launched by the Queensland Government as a blueprint for addressing obesity in Queensland. Taking into account its principal focus on ameliorating obesity amongst children and young people, it is hardly surprising that schools are thrust into the lead role of implementing the EWBA Action Plan and its derivatives addressing the twin causes of obesity - a lack of physical activity and/or proper nutrition. Smart Choices (Queensland Government, 2007b) was introduced in Queensland state schools to regulate school-based food and drinks supply with the aim to limit the children's access to unhealthy food and drinks during school hours. Following the successful implementation of Smart Choices (Queensland Government, 2007b), Smart Moves (Queensland Government, 2007c) was mandated to address the physical activity component of the obesity equation. Under Smart Moves, students in all state schools must be exposed to at least 30 minutes of physical activity of moderate intensity a day. Smart Choices (Queensland Government, 2007b) and Smart Moves (Queensland Government, 2007c) are just two examples of a myriad of other health promotion policies in the contested terrain of school-based curriculum, underlined by the traditional core business of imbuing students with science knowledge, literacy and numeracy.

Data was collected in 10 schools (both primary and secondary) in a low socio-economic metropolitan area with a focus on the effects of the mandated implementation of the EWBA Action Plan and its derivatives i.e. Smart Moves and Smart Choices. Interviews were conducted with school administrators e.g. principals, deputy principals, heads of HPE departments as well as HPE teachers and classroom teachers involved in the structuring of the HPE curriculum within their schools. The pedagogic device (Bernstein, 1996, 2000) allows the data to be analysed in terms of the policy intent and policy action on the ground. In addition, it offers insights to the hegemony between the recontextualising and the reproduction fields and how symbolic control is exerted on the agents of the reproduction field i.e. members of the school community. Specifically, the results discuss the policy implementation from the position of the policy executioners in the reproduction field i.e. school administrators and teachers and how it affects their work. From the results, it appears that there exists a disjunction between the recontextualising and reproduction fields in terms of policy implementation. However, there were also instances where the participants viewed the mandated policy as an affirmation and recognition of their current work, suggesting both fissions and fractures in the schools' interaction with the implementation of the EWBA Action Plan and its derivatives.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 45, MAC091536 Health promotion, health literacy and HPE: Fusions, fissions, and fractures.

Key Phrase:   Health and Physical Education

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LI091380

Paper

Building creativity through learning and earning: Generating originality in research and work

Bingyi Li and Michael Singh, Unversity of Western Sydney

A pressing issue for education is how to successfully produce and gain recognition for producing creativity and originality in research and the workplace. Young adults are expected to be creativity and imaginative by generating creative research ideas and workplace performances. This gives rise to questions about what it mean to be creative in these related contexts, and how might such imagination be encouraged or pursued through work-related educational research. In this paper, answers to these interrelated questions are explored via the concept of creativity. The first section of this paper explores the concept of creativity. The second section reviews literature on the representation of creativity among students from China, and Asia more generally. The third section explains the way in which the evidence was generated for this paper using an autobiographical method that is framed in terms of the relations between the individual and society. The evidentiary section presents an analysis of reflections about creativity in research, work and life. Finally, some strategies are proposed on how to build the creativity and imagination of young adults through learning and earning.

Key Phrase:   Creativity and Imagination in Education

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LIE091089   ®

Paper

Achievement and learning approaches of sojourner students: Do gender and academic discipline make a difference?

Petra Lietz, Australian Council for Educational Research and Liudmila Tarabshkina, Jacobs University

The paper presents results from a longitudinal study of sojourner students which was conducted at an international university in Germany from 2004 to 2007. The study followed one cohort of undergraduate students from the first week of their studies to graduation from their Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts degree. Participants were surveyed at the beginning of each year and in-depth interviews with purposely selected students were conducted at the end of each year. In each survey, students completed three questionnaires: the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) (Schwartz et al. 2001), the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) (Biggs 1987), and the Student Background Questionnaire (Matthews, Lietz & Darmawan 2007). Analyses of the survey data with Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) provided new insights into the relationship between students' values and their learning approaches (achieving, deep, or surface). Moreover, the impact of those variables as well as gender and discipline area (i.e. Arts or Science) on students' academic achievement (GPA) was examined.

Results of an examination of the relationship between values and the three learning approaches showed that two personal values, namely hedonism (i.e."having fun") and achievement, were associated with the achieving learning approach (i.e. seeking high grades, behaving as a"model"student). Hedonism was negatively correlated with the achieving approach whereas valuing achievement was positive linked. The deep learning approach (i.e. learning for meaning and understanding was related positively to the values of self-direction, stimulation and achievement and negatively to hedonism. The surface learning approach (i.e. studying to get a degree/good job) was negatively influenced by universalism (i.e. all people should be treated equally) and self-direction whereas conformity and tradition had a positive effect.

Furthermore, on all three occasions, adherence to specific learning approaches influenced student achievement significantly. Whereas the deep and achieving learning approaches resulted in higher GPA the surface learning approach led to lower GPA.

Finally, various models were analysed to examine the relationship between gender and achievement as well as between discipline area and achievement as previous research had found that both achievement and learning approaches were influenced by these variables. Here, results showed that gender differences in achievement were present only for the surface learning approach, where female students outperformed male students. A significant effect of discipline area (i.e. SES vs. SHSS) emerged only for the deep learning approach, whereby Bachelor of Science students obtained higher scores than their peers studying for a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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LIE091095

Paper

I'm a girl, you're a boy. You study Social Science, I study Natural Science: How different are we?

Petra Lietz, Australian Council for Educational Research and Ognyan Seizov, Jacobs University

In this multiple case study (n= 8) with process orientation (Yin, 2003) in-depth interviews were conducted over a three-year period with undergraduate sojourner students who had been purposely selected to reflect a mix of learning approaches, gender and discipline areas. Interviews probed students about their teaching and learning experiences, personal development and personal values. The subsequent systematic content analysis of interviews was aimed at identifying differences and commonalities in responses across gender and discipline areas.

Results according to gender identified female students as more stable in their learning approach over time and across disciplines, while male students tended to shift their learning strategies depending on how related or not a subject was to their ultimate educational or professional goals. Male interviewees also tended to be more self-directed and did not mention external influences regarding their career paths. Their female counterparts cited family and mentor influences more readily. Students from both genders identified understanding as the ultimate goal behind their learning efforts, while obtaining a university degree and high achievement were close seconds. Also, both male and female respondents reported major changes in their personalities and values over the duration of their undergraduate degrees.

When content-analysing responses by discipline area, natural science students reported greater reliance on deep learning strategies due to their subjects' tendencies to build on previous material. Nevertheless, both natural and social science students mentioned an occasional reliance on surface strategies. Natural science students used the surface approach particularly for subjects outside of their majors whereas social science students reported investing similar amounts of time and effort into all their courses.

As regards extracurricular activities, social science students reported a desire to help their community as the main motivating factor while natural science respondents mentioned personal gains as the main motivating force. As they looked into the future, all natural science students foresaw graduate studies, most of them with significant influence from family or friends, whereas three of the four social science respondents intended to join the labour force. Despite these different directions, students from both discipline areas reported major changes in their future plans and the way they saw themselves in the academic and the professional world compared to their views at the beginning of their studies.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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LIM091243

Paper

Avoiding the"prolonged agony"of studying for standardized national exams: At what price?

Xuan-Shi Lim, Eng Thye Tan and Lu-Ming Kang, National Institute of Education

Standardized tests, often high-stakes in nature, are a common feature of many education systems. Although there is a movement towards authentic and/or varied assessment practices, there is still a strong reliance on standardized tests to measure student achievement despite its widely discussed and documented negative effects on teaching and learning. Short of doing away with standardized testing completely, reducing the number of mandatory high stakes national exams seems to be a realistic and feasible solution in theory. The Integrated Programme (IP) in Singapore allows high-ability students to bypass the 'O' Level examinations at the end of their secondary education, but they are required to sit for the Advanced Level examinations or IB or AP in the final year of their pre-university education.

As intended, the removal of a national standardized exam frees up time and space in the curriculum for the pursuit of a more holistic, broad-based education and diversified assessment modes in the four years of secondary schooling. In effect, IP students enjoy a longer break between mandatory national exams, i.e. Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) and 'A' Levels. This paper surfaces the concerns and anxieties of IP students regarding their ability to do well in a national exam, especially since they have grown accustomed to a different mode of assessment in their secondary education. Additionally, this paper examines student views on the relevance of their prior learning experiences in light of their preparation for the 'A' Levels, IB or AP.

Focus group discussions were conducted annually in seven schools for three consecutive years. Online surveys were administered annually to IP students from participating schools over the span of four years. The longitudinal design tracks changes in students' perspectives about their educational experiences as they transition from secondary to tertiary education. Quantitative findings from online surveys are included to supplement qualitative analysis; specifically, self-reported data on exam anxiety and on the use of assessment methods.

Findings indicate that students generally felt they were lacking in exam-taking techniques or skills and worried that they lack the mental stamina needed to sustain them through examinations. Discontinuities in the academic domain made some students feel that their learning experiences in the secondary years were irrelevant. Others acknowledged the discontinuities but focused instead on their personal growth, and were thus able to integrate their experiences into a coherent educational narrative. A deeper understanding of students' lived experiences would help unearth important considerations for policymakers and educators seeking to enrich learning experiences for students within the climate of high-stakes standardized testing.

Key Phrase:   Secondary Education

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LOC091011    ®

Paper

Moving in the direction of your dreams: Middle years students and educational decision making

Sarah Loch, University of Queensland

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
(from a poster on a classroom wall, 2009)

This paper presents insights into the ways middle years students speak about eucational decision making and how they see the future before them. Research conducted at 'Wilton College', a girls' school in a large urban centre in New South Wales (Australia), has investigated issues surrounding the event of elective subject selection with small groups of middle years students. Of particular interest was the process of giving voice to the discourses students use, create, struggle with or reject in order to create meaning when making and reflecting on their decisions. This study foregrounds the voices of students as they speak about how they made educational decisions and draws forth the ways the students interpret their connections with school, curriculum and the future.

In the first few years of secondary school, during the middle phase of learning, students move from a solidly compulsory curriculum, which has dominated the schooling experience, into curriculum which can be personalised through elective subject choices and co-curricular decisions. Whilst research has focused on the decision making process for upper secondary and tertiary students (Alloway, Dalley, Patterson, Walker, & Lenoy, 2004), there has been relatively little inquiry into the process of educational decision making and subject selection within the framework of schooling structures, especially in the transformational middle years.

The research question is; how is educational choice and decision making understood and experienced by students in the middle years? Results indicate this group of young, female adolescents have a strong interest in engaging with school as they recognise the connections between learning at school and success in the world beyond. However, it is also evident during the middle phase of learning that students are negotiating new territory regarding their strengths and interests and they are often excluded from the formal opportunities for information gathering which are offered to older students. Whilst this does not appear to have restricted students' future imagining, it is evident that students are drawing from a base which is closely linked to family and school and as such is relatively limited. In the interests of furthering research in this field, findings from this study form the basis for further exploration into alternate discourses of middle schooling.

Key Phrase:   Education in the Middle Years and the Middle Years of Schooling

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LUZ091200    ®

Paper

Games played on Australian university alliance websites as they collaborate and compete

Ann Luzeckyj, Flinders University and University of South Australia

In the increasingly complex field of higher education universities are continually required by government and other agencies to participate in complicated activities where they both collaborate and compete for government, private and research funding and for staff and students. Utilising Bourdieu's concepts of field and capital, this paper initially explores the websites of the three Australian university alliances - the Group of Eight (Go8); Australian Technology Network (ATN); and the Innovative Research Universities (IRU) - to ascertain how each utilises particular forms of capital to both collaborate and compete within the field of higher education. A brief explanation of Bourdieu's concepts of field and capital is followed by a discussion about the Australian university alliances. The paper describes how and why these alliances formed then explores their websites to assess the way in which particular forms of capital are utilised on them. These public websites reflect how each university alliance attempts to identify what its constituent universities have in common and how as a group they are unique. The distinguishing characteristics claimed by each university grouping are identified, described and compared to determine how effectively they may be utilised for competitive purposes. Each alliance has determined how to present their own capital in ways that will allow them to compete with the other groups, as they jockey for position and attempt to improve their stakes in the game. As competition for funding, staff and students increases and the game becomes more complex, universities across the sector are required to identify new and more elaborate ways of competing. The development of university ranking systems has encouraged this competitive game. The relevance of university rankings - specifically the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), published by the Institute of Higher Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (IHE-SJTU) and known as the Jiao Tong ranking; the World University rankings published by the Times Higher Education Supplement and known as the Times Higher rankings and the Australian university rankings, published by the Melbourne Institute - is discussed. The paper concludes with a reflection on why, despite their apparent importance as capital these international and national rankings are predominantly absent from the alliances' websites. These explorations provide an insight into the complex games universities play in order to collaborate and to compete for government, private and research funding and for staff and students.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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MAC091074    ®

Paper

The E-interview: A digital, asynchronous data collection in schools

Neil MacNeill, Rob Cavanagh and Peter Reynolds, Curtin University of Technology

The qualitative interview is a time-consuming process, and in school environments it has become more difficult to obtain quality interview time with school administrators and teachers due to an increasing number of organisational factors. The impact of New Public Management, with its emphasis on managerialist concepts of efficiency, has changed the nature of schools in the past two decades, making the use of time an accountable variable for school administration. For the qualitative interviewer, asynchronous internet and other digital communication technologies offer solutions to both the temporal and methodological issues faced by researchers, when all parties are digitally connected.

A key issue for the researcher during any interview is the problem of how best to represent the respondents' responses. In the audio recording of interviews there is a temptation for the researcher to write an authentic representation of the colloquial speech of respondents. While it can be argued that this is a true account of what was said, it may demean the respondents. An advantage of the e-interview is that both parties can review the written (emailed) text as it passes back and forth between the interviewer and interviewee, and make corrections if they are needed. Additionally, the spell check and grammar check alert respondents to errors in their responses.

It is argued that when dealing with literate respondents, in purposive samples, the e-interview facilitates more considered, valid responses to the questions in the interview process.

Key Phrase:   Research Methodology

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MAD091589

Paper

Silence, fear and desire: Why Chile doesn't have a gender equity policy in education and some lessons for Australia

Sebastián Madrid, University of Sydney

Gender equity has been a major public issue since the United Nations Decade for Women (1975-85). Though a common project has arisen in conferences and forums at global and national levels, different countries have given different emphases and range to this problem. While some countries have constructed broad gender equity policies -not always without controversies-, others have only shyly started diffused, partial and sometimes incoherent actions, with an interrupted character throughout time. The latter is the case for Chilean educational policy.

Based on the research of the author in Chile, his personal experience of four years working at the Chilean Ministry of Education, and his relation with some feminist organizations, the paper will explore three levels of explanation for the absence of gender equity in national educational policy.

First, it will explore the impact of the neoliberal reforms that were implemented exceptionally in Chile during Pinochet's dictatorship (e.g. drastic decrease of the role of the State, implementation of a voucher system, etc). Also, it will examine the relation of Neoliberalism to the educational reform carried out since 1990 with the return of democracy (e.g. curriculum design, improvement Programs, etc) and the current paradox between the processes of decentralization-centralization. I will call this process the politics of silence.

Second, the paper will explore the political influence of the Catholic Church in the design and implementation of educational policy and in the subjectivity of Chilean policy-makers. Specifically, it will examine the relation among ideology, religion and politics practice in the context of the transition and post-transition process and its effects on education. I will call this process the politics of fear.

Third, the paper will explore the influence of Chile's feminist movement in the way that gender has been installed in the educational reform. Specifically it will examine contradictions between students' and teachers' needs, and the current policy emphases (e.g. reduction of quality in terms of results in standardized tests, etc). I will call this process the politics of desire.

At the end, some lessons for Australia will be drawn in relation to the"boy turn"in educational policy. I will relate the three Chilean politics with the re-masculinisation of schooling and the discourse of boys as the new disadvantaged in order to respond the question of why it is that, when males are included in equity policies it is to counteract the improvement of females and even the score.

Key Phrase:   Gender and Sexualities

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MAE091005   ®

Paper

Household livelihoods in Solomon Islands squatter settlements and its implications for education and development in post-conflict context

Jack Maebuta, University of New England and Helen Maebuta, University of the South Pacific

A total of 208 households participated in this empirical study. The data was collected through a survey questionnaire administered to the heads of households. The findings revealed that the profile of the heads of household suggests a young population. Most of the squatter households fall into the category of 3 to 7 members (59.1%) with average household size of 6.3. Seventy percent of the settlers live in temporary buildings or shelter and were lacking proper water and sanitation. Majority of the households, (96.6%) did not have electricity in their homes. More than half (53%) of the heads of households have attained only primary education. The average fortnightly income of the households was SI$316. The average daily expenditure was SI$52, while the monthly and annual expenditures were averaged at SI$176 and SI$693 respectively. These findings have pointed to a number of implications for education and development in post-conflict Solomon Islands. As a national development post-conflict issue, urbanization and urban management must be among the top development priorities of the Solomon Islands government. Children's performance in school is undermined by poor nutrition and lack of parental support. In order to achieve the EFA goal, the Solomon Islands government should consider giving education subsidy to low income parents who have more than two children attending schools. Short-life skills courses and adult education programmes could empower households in improving their livelihoods. Improving and adequately equipping the rural schools could curb the rural-urban migration.

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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MAE091007    ®

Paper

Education in post-conflict context: Pathways to participatory school governance in Solomon Islands

Jack Maebuta, University of New England

The purpose of this paper is to explore the pathways to greater participatory approach in school governance as an element of development and post-conflict reconstruction. Although participation in school governance is meant to produce multiple benefits for school and society, it may not be achieved without establishing the tenets for reconciliation and peace. Therefore, the paper begins by examining the pathways to establishing reconciliation and peace which is important to any post-conflict reconstruction initiative. Secondly, so much reliance on participatory governance in the absence of accountability may aggravate rather than diminish the social divisions that are particularly dangerous in post-conflict reconstruction. Hence, it is crucially inseparable to integrate teaching and learning-based accountability in post-conflict governance of schools. The paper proposes that as a development and post-conflict reconstruction tool, school governance must be premised on broader participation, including the excluded. This proposition is important as Belloni, (2001) emphasized that newly acquired 'social capital' (networks, norms, trust) and political skills among marginalised members of small communities do not necessarily strengthen civil society. Similarly, a vibrant civil society producing greater community participation but promoted with uncritical enthusiasm, in the field of educational development, runs the risk of leaving disillusioned and unempowered communities in its post-conflict reconstruction initiatives.

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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MAR091360

Paper

Off the beaten mummy track: Enabling employment for rural single mothers

Jillian Marchant, James Cook Unversity

In 2006 the Commonwealth of Australia introduced Welfare to Work Policies. The programs initiated under the Welfare to Work policy are purported to assist single parents into work through a variety of measures which include varying educational components. It is timely to review single parent recipients of government benefits who have successfully undertaken the Welfare to Work education process and reflect on the experiences of people who have achieved the objective of employment to further our understanding where policy improvement can occur.

This paper reviews current research literature on Welfare to Work policy in relation to the experiences of women single parents in rural contexts. In a recent study it is demonstrated that 60% of sole parents do not have an education beyond year 10, and furthermore that only 25% of single parent women have a post secondary qualification. These figures represent a deficit in education and training which requires significant investment before entry into the labour market. Recent reports from DEEWR indicate significant gains in workforce engagement through the Welfare to Work programs. It is of interest to gather information from employed single mothers to review education and training as a systemic enabler for Welfare to Work. This collaboration of both Welfare to Work policy figures and lived experiences of employed rural single mothers serves to incorporate a feedback mechanism as a policy improvement process that is crucial to adequate policy formulation.

Therefore, the particular focus of this paper is to gather the lived experiences of employed rural single mothers alongside DEEWR reports. Furthermore, this collaboration will serve to consider the various educational components of Welfare to Work as enablers which assist individuals into the workforce and sustains employment for single mothers. This type of reflection on Welfare to Work hopes to highlight education as an important enabler in both employment gain and sustained employment and assist with further policy formulation.

Key Phrase:  Rural Education

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MCC091181

Paper

Towards a model of strategic education union research

John McCollow, Queensland Teachers Union

In recent times, Australian unions have embraced an"organising model"and many have restructured their staffing arrangements so that there is a clear focus for union officers on organising and recruiting. Unions have also in many cases developed call centres and web-based services which provide information and assistance to members and points of contact for potential members and the public generally.

In at least some unions, these developments have led to a de-emphasis on union research and a lessening of the unions' research capacity. Even in unions where the importance of research is acknowledged, internal research capacity has often been diminished through the outsourcing of research tasks.

This paper argues that building up union research capacity should not be seen as an alternative to an organising focus or to the development of more sophisticated modes of information and service provision, but as complementary. Furthermore, the importance of research for unions has increased due to factors such as the virtual abolition of a centralised industrial relations system which demands that unions explore new and innovative ways to exercise power, and the rapidly changing environment in many industries which makes it important for unions to continually monitor developments.

However, many traditional models and modes of research in Australian unions have been less than strategic and at least some have been of questionable value and use. Many unions and unionists see research has a reactive, technical exercise with little connection to either the union's agenda setting process or to the day-to-day work of most union officers and rank and file members. Additionally, for education unions, there are important questions about the nature and scope of research (e.g. should it include research on professional and curriculum issues) that remain unresolved.

The paper argues that Australian education unions need to:

• Build their research capacity;
• Ensure that the research has a strategic focus (i.e. that it informs the agenda setting process);
• Ensure that research links to practice.

The paper is intended to provide a starting point for the development of a model of strategic research for education unions. It identifies some key principles and enumerates some questions that provide a guide to assessing the extent to which these principles inform education union research.

The key principles of strategic union research are that it is:

• Strategic,
• Integrated,
• Connected,
• Managed, and
• Reflexive.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 17, CC091151 Research for advocacy: The case of education unions".

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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MCC091185

Paper

Using descriptive statistics for advocacy

John McCollow, Queensland Teachers Union

This presentation will discuss how education unions use descriptive statistics to support advocacy for public education. A number of publicly available sources of data will be identified including from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Commonwealth Grants Commission, Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations, State Education Departments, State and Commonwealth Treasuries, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research, Education at a Glance (OECD), the National Report on Schooling and the Report on Government Services.

Specific examples will be provided of how education unions have used data from these sources (including lots of interesting tables and charts). These could include:

• Trends in Commonwealth funding for government and non-government schools.
• Trends in State Government funding for schools.
• Australia's funding of education in an international context.
• Funding for vocational education and training.
• Teacher salaries.

The presentation will consider the advantages and pitfalls, limitations and usefulness of various data sources and weigh the effectiveness of the use of descriptive statistics in education union campaigns.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 17, MCC091151"Research for advocacy: The case of education unions".

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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MCD091569    ®

Paper

Educators' views on music technology in primary schools

Janet McDowall, University of South Australia

The research reported in this paper was conducted in a context in which there was an expectation that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) would be used in all areas of learning in primary school curriculum-including the arts, which incorporated music. Within this context there was a need for teachers of music -both classroom generalists and music specialists-to have access to pertinent, contextually relevant, information with the aim of demystify the use of ICTs in children's music education through the demonstration of possibilities within real educational settings. In response to this need, a research study was conducted with the objective of locating teachers of music, both specialists and generalists, who were making use of ICTs for junior primary and primary music teaching and learning, and documenting this use of ICTs through a series of vignettes. The intention was that this process would 'give voice' to these practitioners as generators of professional knowledge by documenting practical details of their ICT usage and associated curriculum decision making. In so doing, it would document some aspects of their 'lived' experience in classrooms. Interviews were conducted with five participants-four music specialists and one classroom generalist-addressing matters that included: use of particular hardware and software; types of learning experiences; social considerations; and assessment and evaluation procedures. Analysis of interview data, using NVivo, presented practical details of educational planning and implementation, as well as the more general principles that underpin these practices. There were considerable differences between participants' responses but one factor repeatedly stood out as fundamental in each participant's work: an attitude of willingness to try new resources and teaching approaches. However, this was not a case of innovation for its own sake, for a novelty effect. Rather, each participant was able to articulate the educational benefits / value of their teaching approaches and was able to provide a rationale for their decisions within contemporary primary school contexts. An associated factor was each participant's willingness to be a co-learner with their students without any sense of intimidation when their own skills and knowledge in a particular area were still developing. Overall, this research study documented a range of matters associated with the use of ICTs in music curriculum in primary schools. It showed that, while this is a relatively new aspect of primary school music education, it is one which-for some teachers at least-is an integral and legitimate part of their teaching.

Key Phrase:   Primary Education

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MCG091602    ®

Paper

Reflecting on the emotions and challenges of leadership: Professional action research

Roxy McGuire, Monash University

This narrative retrospective article concerns the impact of a 'Reflecting on the Emotions and Challenges of Leadership' action research project in a secondary college in Australia, during which a group of educators at all positional levels came together in different forums to reflect on leadership from their perspectives and to participate in various leadership activities. The project fostered a greater understanding of the emotions and challenges of leadership, and through this relational development factor contributed to a much needed cultural shift within the school. Over time, all staff became engaged with the professional reading and professional dialogues. The emotional dimension was featured in the approach and thus this article, which describes their journey, contributes to the discourse by highlighting the importance of discussing and reflecting upon the emotional lives of educators as a way in to building collaborative professional learning communities in schools.

Key Phrase:   Educational Policy, Leadership and Management

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MCL091427    ®

Paper

Texting, sexting and social networking among Australian youth and the need for cyber safety education

Catherine McLoughlin & Jill Burgess, Australian Catholic University.

Digital tools and social networking site provide scope for a range of forms of cyber expression and social interaction. The prevalence of negative behaviours such as cyberbullying has increased over the past few years, as adolescents take advantage of the anonymity of cyberspace to victimise, marginalise, ridicule and threaten their victims. Cyberbullying, otherwise known as e-bullying, electronic bullying, mobile bullying or online bullying in now a recognised problem in Australian schools and cases have been reported in the USA, Canada and the UK. This paper reviews the literature on studies conducted in Australia on-bullying behaviour. Data from a number of Australian studies are presented. The finding indicate that instant messaging, mobile phones and social networking sites are contexts where cyberbullying occur, and that girls are more likely to be victims that boys. The survey results show that students need to develop knowledge of e-safety strategies. While risks of victimisation are present when youth use Internet applications, preventive measures my have greater impact if they focus on reducing risky online behaviours among youth. Recommendations are made on strategies for educating youth in media literacy skills and e-safety rather than limiting access to technology.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 41, MCL091524 Addressing pedagogical and staff development issues in rural and regional schools: Initiatives based on partnerships and community building.

Key Phrase:   Information and Communication Technology

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MCL091524

Paper

Using Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) to build professional learning communities

Catherine McLoughlin, Carolyn Broadbent, Jo Brady, Maureen Boyle and Sue Wilson, Australian Catholic University

Teachers in rural and regional schools often experience professional isolation, lack of dialogue with colleagues and limited opportunities for professional learning in partnership with other practitioners. This paper presents examples of issues confronting rural and regional schools, pedagogical challenges and working models of professional learning. Rural educators may benefit from professional learning opportunities that are based on the communities of practice framework (CoP). Communities of practice are dynamic, evolving, self-producing entities that extend beyond formal organizational structures and have their own structure, interaction modes and styles of communication, which support networking, participation and sharing of ideas and resources. Projects initiated by SiMERR ACT have supported schools, communities and learners by forging partnerships and new perspectives, and by providing resources and synergies to increase social capital and enable progressive change and improvement. The projects have focussed on creating a reciprocal relationship between teachers, schools and communities with the aim of improving student learning outcomes in Science, Mathematics and ICT. The projects show evidence of pedagogical innovation, greater teacher awareness of issues and opportunities for professional development. By enabling schools, teachers and learners to prioritise capacity building, with a focus on whole school community development and participatory dialogue, new practices and pedagogies have gained the momentum to continue beyond the life cycle of specific projects.

Key Phrase: Information and Communication Technology

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MCM091513    ®

Paper

A new scale for measuring socioeconomic status in educational research: Development and validation of the Australian Socioeconomic Index 2006 (AUSEI06)

Julie McMillan, Australian National University and Frank Jones, University of Queensland and Adrian Beavis, Australian Council for Educational Research

This paper introduces a new occupational status scale, the Australian Socioeconomic Index 2006 (AUSEI06), which can be used to explore a wide range of equity issues relating to educational aspirations, early school leaving, access to higher education, literacy and numeracy levels, and other aspects of educational access, achievement, and attainment. AUSEI06 was developed in response to the introduction of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The scale provides a simple means for educational researchers to convert ANZSCO codes into more sociologically meaningful occupational status scores.

The aims of this paper are fourfold: to outline AUSEI06's theoretical underpinnings; to describe the development of the scale; to validate it for use in educational contexts; and to offer some practical suggestions for its use.

AUSEI06 is a socioeconomic index. The scaling of occupations is based upon the assumption that occupations provide the means of converting a person's human capital (education) into material rewards (income). That is, the relationships between education, occupation, and income are conceptualized in terms of a simple causal chain whereby educational effects on earnings are mediated, as far as possible, by occupational attainment.

Data from the 2006 Census were used to generate the AUSEI06 scale. An iterative scaling algorithm, first developed for the International Socio-economic Index, was used to scale occupations in such a manner as to maximize the indirect effect of education on earnings (via occupation) while simultaneously minimizing its direct effect on earnings. The resultant AUSEI06 scale ranges from zero to 100, with labourers at the bottom of the scale and medical practitioners at the top.

Data from the Negotiating the Life Course project were used to validate the AUSEI06 for use in educational research. Concurrent validity was assessed by examining whether AUSEI06 was related to a range of educational outcomes in an expected way. Consistent with previous research, the results suggest that completing school, obtaining a post-school qualification, the type of qualification obtained, and attitudes towards education are associated with the socioeconomic characteristics of a person's family when they were growing up as measured by AUSEI06.

In summary, AUSEI06 provides a means for educational researchers to convert ANZSCO codes into occupational status scores. In the past, parental occupational status has been linked with the educational outcomes of their offspring. Validation results suggest that family background, as measured by AUSEI06, continues to be related to these outcomes.

Key Phrase:   Sociology of Education

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MCP09068

Paper

Continuing professional learning through a standards framework

Rhonda McPhee, Victorian Institute of Teaching

Understanding the development of professional practice in beginning teachers is a complex area of study. A myriad of factors, ranging from the context of the school and students to the disposition of the teacher, can determine how quickly and how deeply effective professional practice is developed. Regardless of this, many schools require beginning teachers to be competent practitioners from day one and to be ready to assume higher duties and responsibilities early in their career. The establishment of standards based regulatory processes has been viewed by some members of the profession as adding unnecessarily to the stress of teachers who are in their first years of teaching. This paper seeks to dispel such a view by demonstrating that regulatory processes can in fact promote and guide professional learning for beginning teachers and support the development of professional practice.

Using longitudinal data collected over the previous five years, this paper specifically explores the success of the Supporting Provisionally Registered Teachers' program, which has been developed and implemented by the Victorian Institute of Teaching. It will focus on the training of school based mentors to support beginning teachers and discuss the evolution of a standards referenced evidence-based process for provisionally registered teachers to gain full registration. Undertaking a consistent evidence-based process is a requirement for all Victorian provisionally registered teachers and this ensures opportunities to work with more experienced colleagues and to reflect on the effectiveness of teaching in relation to student learning. Over time this process has evolved to accommodate a diversity of teaching contexts and draw evidence from the normal practice of the teacher. In parallel with these regulatory processes, school induction and mentoring support has become not only accepted as a part of entry to the profession but has also focused to a greater degree on real support for beginning teachers. Analysis of data collected from teachers attending Institute conducted seminars which are part of the Supporting Provisionally Registered Teachers Program, and from provisionally registered teachers, their mentors and principals after they have gained full registration status provides a rich source of information to quantify the benefits of the program.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 23, COS091210 Supporting teacher professional learning - the Victorian experience.

Key Phrase:Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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MEA091367

Paper

Dispositions and changing teacher practice in mathematics

Tamsin Meaney and Troels Lange, Charles Sturt University and Paola Valero, Aalborg University

We explore how different interpretations of learning can be integrated to form a theoretical framework for exploring teachers' perceptions of professional learning about mathematics teaching. Although it is possible to identify the separate, contributing factors that operate in mathematics classrooms, little is known about how teachers perceive factors interacting together to affect student learning outcomes. What is known is that large-scale professional development programmes can lead to increases, rather than decreases, in differences in achievement between student groups based on ethnicity, socio-economic status and gender (Young-Loveridge, 2000, 2003). From their point of view immersed in the complexity of everyday practice, teachers may perceive a different set of factors interacting in other ways than those imagined by the professional development designers making the learning experiences of limited value to them.

Work done in mathematics education by Skovsmose and Valero combined with Kemmis and Grootenboer's work on academic architectures provide a theoretical framework that enables this complexity to be unpacked. Skovsmose considered learning to involve ascribing meaning to different activities that learners are engaged in. He wrote"[m]eaning in learning comes to refer to a relationship between the dispositions of the learner, the intentions of the learner, the intended and unintended effects of learning activities, and the learner's reflections on these effects"(2005, p. 93). The complexity of factors that influence the actions of learners is described as a learning landscape (Alrø, Skovsmose & Valero, 2009). Different interrelated dimensions constitute this complex network of social practices (Valero, 2007).

Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008), using a scheme from Aristotle and adopted by Habermas, also discussed dispositions but within the context of how these dispositions were formed. Although there are many similarities in how Skovsmose (2005) and Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008) described the influence of socio-political/socio-cultural influence on dispositions, Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008) provided more details about how dispositions are shaped by factors external to the individual. They described three extra-individual structures and processes - culturally-discursive, material-economic and social-political - that"shape dispositions and actions, both in the educator's general response to a particular situation or setting, and in relation to their particular responses at particular moments"(p. 50). These processes were described as 'practice architectures'.

We explore in this paper the combination of these two approaches and how they can be used in devising powerful theoretical lenses for unpacking the complexity of why professional development may not lead to teachers adopting new practices.

Key Phrase:    Mathematics Education and Numeracy

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MES091394

Paper

Exploring school-industry partnerships: reflections from an industry liaison officer

Marianne Messer, Deakin University

Government policy across Australia has looked to developing effective partnerships between schools and workplaces as a strategy to engage young people in 'hands-on' learning. The rapid growth of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in schools and other youth education settings has placed particular emphasis on the need for partnerships that engage 15 to 19 year old students in workplace learning and their development of employability skills. This policy direction has required schools and industry to interact more cooperatively and created new roles in schools for industry liaison personnel to develop and manage effective partnerships between schools and their industry partners. In this paper the author reflects on her role as an industry liaison officer working at a medium-sized technical school in regional Victoria. It presents two case studies of school-industry partnership initiatives and explores the opportunities for learning created by these. The paper draws on the following key questions: how are the partnerships being used to prepare students for life beyond school; how are anticipated learning outcomes are being measured; and what challenges are being confronted by the role of industry liaison officer. The author discussed how 'doing partnership work' requires the facilitation of mutual understandings between schools and industry. While partnerships creates opportunities for young people to assemble new learning from these two different settings, the experience of transcending different institutional cultures can be challenging for students, educators and industry partners. The author concludes by discussing how the school-industry partnerships outlined in this paper have required changes in the way both the school and industry partners work.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 42, BLA091529 Using applied learning to develop school - community partnerships.

Key Phrase:   Secondary Education

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MIL09070

Paper

Support in Cyberspace - new initiatives for teacher professional learning

John Mildren, Victorian Institute of Teaching

The use of professional standards for registration and regulation has become an accepted part of the landscape in the teaching profession, both nationally and internationally. Standards are used to not only enable teachers to enter the profession but to also maintain a presence in the profession. In Victoria registered teachers are required to demonstrate that they have maintained their professional practice as part of renewing their registration. This means that they must have taught for at least 50 days and undertaken at least 100 hours of standards referenced professional development activities in the previous five years. An initiative introduced in 2008 has provided specific support for teachers who need to identify professional development opportunities that reference standards of professional practice.

This paper discusses the development of Pdi, a search engine of professional development courses and activities developed by the Victorian Institute of Teaching. It outlines the importance of all teachers having centralised access to professional development activities and the value of quality assurance mechanisms to ensure all activities and course teachers find on Pdi reference standards of professional practice and principles of effective professional learning. It also considers the value of Pdi in supporting the education of providers of courses and activities on the specific learning needs of teachers. Other features of Pdi will be discussed, as will future developments of the site.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 23, COS091210 Supporting teacher professional learning - the Victorian experience.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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MIL091206   ®

Paper

Embodied logic: understanding discipline through teachers' commentaries

Zsuzsa Millei, University of Newcastle and Rebecca Raby, Brock University

Ideas of discipline are organised into coherent sets of approaches that construct unified subjects of discipline and present logical delineations of theory that, in turn, inform practices and techniques of discipline. We aim to demonstrate in this paper that despite the assumedly logical nature of these approaches and the unified subjects they attempt to produce, individual teachers when talking about disciplining students create an individual and 'embodied logic' to justify their practices that appear as much less coherent and somewhat illogical or even incompatible. This 'embodied logic' is composed through statements delivered by the confluence of discourses of discipline approaches and other related discourses, for example ideas on human nature, childhood and adolescence, respect, responsibility and so on.

In order to develop this argument, we first examine the ways in which approaches to discipline utilise scientific discourses and constitute ideas about the subjects of discipline and produce particular rationalities of discipline. Tying this examination together with considerations of respect, responsibility, self-discipline, choice and so on, the paper then examines codes of conduct that utilise these and aim to create an inherent logic of discipline. Following that teachers' commentaries on codes of conduct are analysed in order to demonstrate the ways in which constructions of 'the child', 'the adolescent' and 'human nature' and the previously explored rationalities and considerations play out in teachers' thinking. We argue, that these commentaries are mobile and temporary assemblages of statements that are used by teachers to organise their reasoning to create an 'embodied logic' to justify and explain particular ways of disciplining students, but often are composed of diverse, incompatible and irreconcilable ideas and values. Thus, we develop an argument that the ways in which these considerations play out are fragmented and often illogical, in spite of teachers' attempts to build up an 'embodied logic'. Finally, we raise some questions about the implications of what this fragmented view of disciplining might mean.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 22, MIL091207 Complicating understandings of discipline.

Key Phrase:   Sociology of Education

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MOY091567    ®

Paper

Learning to teach with technologies what pre-service teachers say about their experiences

Kathryn Moyle, University of Canberra

It is the intention of the Australian Government, that over the next five years, as a result of the Digital Education Revolution, all secondary schools in Australia will have achieved computer to student ratios of one-to-one. This investment in infrastructure brings with it many challenges. Two of these facing Australian educators are:

• In what ways can advantage be made of such a significant investment in schools' infrastructure?; and
• What preparation do pre-service teachers require to enable them to meaningfully include technologies in their classroom activities?

To provide some insights into these two questions, this paper draws on data collected from pre-service teacher education students in 2008, as part of a larger, Australian Government funded research project listening to students' views and expectations of teaching and learning with technologies. In this paper, the data collected from pre-service teacher education students is used to provide insights into their views about including technologies into their teaching and learning activities during practicum; to gain insights about their views and expectations of the skills with technologies of their supervising teachers when on practicum, and of their university lecturers; and to reflect on their suggestions about how their courses could be improved. This paper highlights some of the issues and challenges facing Australian educators to prepare pre-service teachers to meaningfully include technologies into their future students' learning.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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NG091323    ®

Paper

Exploring the perceptions of stakeholders in a Singapore kindergarten during a period of curriculum reform

Josephine Ng, RMIT University

For 40 years, the Singapore education system has adopted a standard curriculum, however the Minister of Education, Mr Shanmugaratnam (2006) states that the 'one size fits all' approach will not be feasible in a 'globalized world'. There is a call for a shift from academic rote learning to more experiential engaged learning, life long learning and learning that is character building. Singapore MOE and policy makers have realized the importance of early childhood. In 2003, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore launched the Pre-school Curriculum Framework based on a two-year pilot research study. The resultant new curriculum focuses on developing the child holistically, on learning through play and experimentation, and on interacting with the teacher. To help raise the professional standard of pre-school educators in Singapore, MOE mandated that by 2008, all preschool teachers and principals should attain the minimum qualification of pre-school teaching diploma and leadership diploma respectively.

The transition to include a play curriculum will not be unproblematic in a Meritocratic education system like Singapore. Fuelled by the strong competition for their children to perform well academically in primary school, anxious parents demand to see academic work in the form of worksheets , with expectations for their children to have a 'head start' in reading and writing. As parents are used to years of traditional practices in viewing academic worksheets as a form of child's work, the transition to include a play curriculum will not be an easy process. Though teachers and principal may be skilled and trained, their roles, beliefs and practices are challenged in trying to negotiate the implementation of play in their curriculum and also meeting parent's expectations.

A qualitative research methodology was used to gain an in-depth study on the challenges, problems or emerging transition issues faced by the stakeholders. The research methodology entails a case study of one kindergarten. Data collection methods consist of interviews, observation and document analysis. Findings provide new insights of indirect and direct pressures for the curriculum change from outside and within that are experienced by the stakeholders in the kindergarten. Findings will also provide an understanding of how change is viewed, experienced and handled by all those involved in the kindergarten during a curriculum reform in order to ensure a smooth partnership in this education change process.

Key Phrase:   Early Childhood

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OCO09085

Paper

The contexts of community and its social ecology

Justen O'Connor and Laura Ward, Monash University

This paper aims to contextualise a socio-ecological framework for physical education (PE) that sits within a broad understanding of community. Underpinning this framework is the assumption that PE has the potential to develop physically educated citizens capable of thinking beyond performative games and sports, towards more comprehensive understandings of ways in which they and others engage actively across these contexts and their lifespan.

Despite provision existing in various national and international curriculum frameworks for PE to extend beyond dominant performative sports and activity-driven discourse, physical educators have struggled to provide a context for notions of 'community wellbeing' connected to movement across the lifespan. Indeed, to be a 'physically educated' member of a 'community' is a confused concept with performative, kinesthetic, socially critical and public health paradigms all competing for territory. Having previously defined community as being pluralistic, layered and defined not only by social or geographical ties, but by communication (O'Connor, 2008), we acknowledge an additional layer of complexity. In being asked to move beyond a focus on individual performance and health, the physical educator must now consider the numerous human, social, cultural, natural and environmental concerns that conspire to shape community physical activity. Through drawing upon everyday issues within the context of a school community, we hope to illustrate how socio-ecological frames for movement might be developed and in doing so explore implications for pedagogy, curricula and research. We acknowledge the complexities of 'community' and physical activity through this contextualising process and gesture towards a transdisciplinary approach that can inform curriculum and provide new understandings for practice.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 29, CUT091286 Contextual issues in the social ecology of movement, environment and community (MEC).

Key Phrase:   General

ONS091375

Paper

Towards grasping the unknowable: Networked heirarchies of analogies

Andrys Onsman, David Paganin, Monash University

This paper investigates the purposeful use of analogy in teaching and learning rather than how analogy works as a neuro-cognitive activity. Nonetheless, we shall make some reference to mental processing in order to support our proposals. The use of the word purposeful in this context is taken to mean that analogies are educationally most fruitful in specific contexts. Further, it assumes that an analogy has an optimal potency, which diminishes or increases in relation to complexity and relevance. In turn, this suggests that analogies have inherent disposability, or rather, we suggest, a range of references or applicability. We discuss the notion of a hierarchy of disparate analogies to describe a single instance or event and conclude that because of the capacity to move non-linearly amongst analogies, it is more profitable to refer to a network of analogies that allow specifically purposeful understandings of a fundamentally unknowable concept. In conclusion we suggest that the cognitive strategy that drives the movement within the network is contextually-bound functionalism.

Key Phrase:   Analogy, Networks, Cognitive Strategies

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ONS091445

Paper

Carrots and sticks: mandating teaching accreditation in Higher Education

Andrys Onsman, Monash University

This paper questions the value of the current trend towards mandating formal teaching accreditation in Higher Education. It discusses a number of studies that tend to suggest that mandatory courses do little to improve the experience of the student, even though participants most often report a greater confidence in their teaching capacity. The paper goes on to suggest that a combination of short intensive Foundations type courses in combination with supportive mentoring may be a more effective way to ensure that students have a fruitful experience in their undergraduate courses.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education Accreditation Foundations

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PAR09067

Paper

Discipline and the dojo

Robert Parkes, University of Newcastle

"You must be very disciplined?"is a question I've been asked many times, almost the instant after I've revealed my twenty years of involvement in the martial arts. It rehearses a popular perception of the martial arts, and is frequently the motivation of many a parent who has brought their child to a dojo in order to"become more disciplined". This paper is concerned with the productive nature of discipline. That is, with what discipline produces. I use the martial arts as a case study to explore empirically Foucault's (1977; 1982/1994) claim regarding the productive nature of power and discipline, particularly because it so frequently is depicted as a site of extreme discipline. Informed by the turn towards transgressive methodologies in poststructural educational research (Davies, 2004), I adopt an auto-enthographic style to explore both the constraining and enabling effects of discipline as it manifests in and through the martial arts; and consequently I investigate the way discipline is central to the act of becoming in the dojo.

Through my unfolding narrative, I attempt to understand the deliberate act of subjection that is implicated in the disciplining process by which the individual is transformed through the martial arts. I hope to explore the extent to which both the constraining and enabling effects of discipline may be understood as productive, in the bildung sense, of a particular kind of person. More significantly, through exploring the teleologies of different martial traditions, I argue that the constraining effects of discipline are its productive aspects in terms of shaping the practitioner's mental outlook, as well as their emotional and intellectual dispositions. In conducting such an exploration, I inevitably follow in the footsteps of Eppert and Wang (2008), engaging in a dialogue between Eastern and Western perspectives on discipline as pedagogy and curriculum. Drawing on both my own experiences as martial arts student and instructor, and popular representations of the martial arts in commercial film media such as the Karate Kid, I seek to trouble conceptions of discipline as repressive. This is not performed in some celebration of martial arts. Rather, I am interested in using the martial arts as a case study to understand the complex ways in which discipline, desire, and power circulate and interact to produce particular kinds of subjects. I then use the understandings developed as a lens for exploring the problem of discipline and schooling more generally.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 22, MIL091207 Complicating understandings of discipline.

Key Phrase:   Sociology of Education

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PAR09895

Paper

Exploring the impact of written assignment feedback on students' motivation to learn

Somduth Parboteeah, De Montfort University

In Higher Education, feedback is considered a key factor affecting learning, and consequently, it has gradually become an integral part of the learning, teaching and assessment of students. Feedback given to students has a dual purpose: firstly to justify the grade that has been awarded and secondly to give constructive guidance on further learning. As a result, whenever students receive feedback on their written assignments, that feedback has the potential to have a positive or negative impact on the students' motivation and learning.

The aim of this paper is to explore how students in Higher Education perceive their assessment feedback practice and its effects on their motivation to learn. An initial thematic search of the literature was undertaken resulting in the identification of theoretical frameworks that explain students' behaviour. These were used to develop a questionnaire to elicit students' perception of their assignment feedback and its effect on their motivation to learn. The questionnaire consisted of twenty seven items, which students had to rate using a Likert scale. Students also had the opportunity to provide any additional comments in the 'free style text' section. The questionnaire was then administered to a sample of nursing students (n=168) undertaking their initial preparation (n=139) and those studying post-qualifying courses (n=29).

This paper reports on the findings from this study. Students perceive good quality feedback as important for learning. Based on Herzberg's motivational theory, this paper argues that good quality written feedback can act as 'motivators' to encourage students to work harder. Furthermore, students are likely to be intrinsically motivated if they are: able to control the amount of effort they put in the tasks, make a difference to the outcome and developing mastery. Thus feedback should include elements that students can control such as the amount of effort they put in their assignment in attaining better grades.

Key Phrase:   Motivation and Learning

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PAY09084

Paper

The context of environment/place and its social ecology

Phillip Payne and Amy Cutter-Mackenzie, Monash University

The paper addresses the salient contextual issues shaped by the concepts of environment and place. More specifically, contextual considerations will largely be place-based as they occur in and through diverse environments, including natural/physical, wild/more-than-human, built/human-made, social/community and personal/individual environments.

Place is constituted by time-space and the social contexts in which time and space are constructed, often in isolation from each other thus rendering any conception of place as problematic. Various social constructions of time -- as cyclical, linear or digital will significantly shape the experience of place and the perceptions and responsiveness to it. That is, time as a context in which various social constructions occur is, indeed, enigmatic. The socially enigmatic nature of time sometimes makes its experience dissonant, even contradictory, often intensified and individualized. Places, and place responsiveness are, therefore, highly vulnerable to the enigmas of socially constructed times. Such fast, accelerating and slow contexts of time remain a risk and challenge for how we might critically examine and experience place.

Through drawing upon everyday issues in a built school environment we consider the intersections of environment-place and time-space within a broader social ecological framework. In presenting this case in 'context' we gesture towards a transdisciplinary understanding of environment-place signified by time-space.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 29, CUT091286 Contextual issues in the social ecology of movement, environment and community (MEC)

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Key Phrase:   General

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PET091277    ®

Paper

First Year Pre-service Teachers' Learning about Behaviour Management

Judith Peters, University of South Australia

The management of student behaviour is widely recognised as one of the greatest challenges facing pre-service, beginning and experienced teachers (McCormack, 1996). Studies have found that some beginning teachers attribute their behaviour management difficulties to lack of attention to this area during their teacher education program (Australian Education Union, 2008; TTA NQT Survey, 2005, cited in Bromfield, 2006). Yet there have been few studies that focus on pre-service teachers' learning about behaviour management during their program (McNally, I'anson, Whewall and Wilson 2005; McCormack, 2006). Many studies and reports have pointed to the important role of professional experience in pre-service teachers' learning (see for example House of Representatives Standing Committee and Vocational Training, 2007; Author 2009). This study sought to address identified gaps in the field by examining first year pre-service teachers' perceptions of learning about behaviour management after their initial professional experience.

Data for the study were collected via a questionnaire administered to all first year students after their first five day program of professional experience. The professional experience program was delivered by five schools in close partnership with lecturers in the course and was intended to provide a highly structured and supportive introduction to teaching for 25 - 30 pre-service teachers in each school. The participating schools were selected for their ability to model best practice.

Analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from the questionnaire produced a number of themes and insights into students' learning about behaviour management. In the paper these are compared and contrasted with a frame-work of seven key principles of best practice developed by the MCEETYA Student Behaviour Management Project (De Jong, 2005). The analysis revealed that the pre-service teachers had learnt about many aspects that were congruent with these principles. It also revealed notable gaps in their learning which will need to be addressed in the course in future years and in the remainder of the degree if they are to become effective teachers upon graduation. These gaps were in the areas of: understanding the complex and interconnected nature of pupil behaviour and the environments in which it is constructed; applying professional judgment in responding to different students in different contexts; managing chronically disruptive students; and engaging within wider support systems. This paper presents and discusses the findings from the study and makes a number of suggestions as to how the gaps in pre-service teachers' learning might be addressed.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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PHA09933    ®

Paper

The reciprocality between critical thinking and deep processing strategies: A longitudinal approach

Huy Phan, The University of New England

Research evidence indicates that critical thinking practice and study processing strategies act in concert to make a unique contribution to the prediction of academic performance. More recently, however, the research inquiry has concerned predominantly the direction of causal effects between critical thinking practice and study processing strategies. The present paper discusses a longitudinal study that examined the reciprocality between critical thinking and deep processing. Three waves of data were collected using two hundred and fourteen university students (127 women, 87 men). Various Likert-response questionnaires (e.g., Reflective Thinking Questionnaire) were used to measure critical thinking and deep processing strategies. Structural equation modeling using LISREL 8.72 showed that deep processing at T1 exerted a temporally displaced effect on critical thinking at T2; critical thinking at T2 also exerted a temporally displaced effect on deep processing at T3. There was little evidence to support the reciprocal effects model.

Key Phrase:   Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences

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PHA09967    ®

Paper

Examination of time perspective, hope, self-efficacy, and ethnic identity: A structural equation model

Huy Phan, The University of New England

Recent research indicates that time perspective, hope, self-efficacy, and ethnic identity explain a significant, independent portion of the variability in academic performance (Adelabu, 2008). Very few studies have used structural equation modeling to explore the direct and indirect effects of these theoretical orientations when combined within one conceptual model. This study tested a conceptual model that included ethnic identity, time perspective (present, future), self-efficacy, and hope. We used causal modeling procedures to explore the direct and indirect effects of these theoretical orientations on students' academic achievements in science and mathematics. Two hundred and forty-eight Form 4 (139 girls and 109 boys) adolescents completed a number of inventories (e.g., Hope). LISREL 8.72 indicated the direct positive effects of time perspective (present, future) on academic performance; hope was also influenced by both present time perspective and self-efficacy. No indirect effects between the theoretical constructs and academic performance were observed. A one-way MANOVA revealed no statistical difference between boys and girls in this theoretical framework.

Key Phrase:   Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences

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PRI091333

Paper

Sometimes your best partners can be right next door!

Bruce Pridham, La Trobe University

The study,"Digging holes or building foundations: Applied learning programs in the middle years", is an investigation of the effectiveness of an Applied Learning program in a regional central Victorian secondary school. It is an evaluation of a program; the program's conceptualisation, its implementation and its impact on participants. This research compares the program with the key concepts of Applied Learning described in the literature; it will identify the gains or benefits in attitudes, motivation and performance of participants.

This paper reports on the experiences of the group of participants in a middle years' curriculum initiative. It describes the selection of a suitable program partner for the"Applied Learning"project and explores the impact of this collaborative partnership on the participants. Through this partnership established with a local Primary School, students involved in the Applied Learning pilot Program were able to conduct a modified Health and Physical Education Program for the Prep and Grade 1 students.

This curriculum innovation was developed and implemented based on a broad interpretation of the 8 Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) Principles of Applied Learning. The research was conducted in 2006. 28 Year 8 students were involved in the"Applied Learning"program. At the end of the first year in 2006 when this research was undertaken, these students had one teacher for their homeroom who also taught them for three other subjects, English, Humanities, and Physical Education. 20 students and the homeroom teacher participated in the research. The study uses qualitative data collected from three student focus group interviews that were conducted at the end of the first year of the program. There were six students in each group with a total of 20 students being interviewed by two researchers. These focus group interviews went for approximately 20 minutes each. In preparation for the focus group interviews, and as an additional investigative activity designed to help focus the discussions with the small groups, all 20 students who participated in the study also completed a questionnaire regarding their experiences in the class throughout the past year. The students appeared eager to write about their experiences and were willing to share their stories. The questionnaire had 12 open ended questions, allowing for the students to record their experiences. The class homeroom teacher was interviewed as part of the data collection process. Participants acknowledged that through involvement in the partnership activities their self confidence and learning outcomes were improved. This contributed to an engaging, valuable and active learning experience for the group.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 42, BLA091529 Using applied learning to develop school - community partnerships.

Key Phrase:   Secondary Education

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PRO09893

Paper

The personal domain: exploring what sustains professionals in urban fringe communities

Brenton Prosser, Michelle Tuckey and Sarah Wendt, University of South Australia

At the Adelaide AARE Annual Conference in November 2006, Prosser presented a paper that reported on a pilot study into the role of imagery, emotion and hope in sustaining teacher's work in difficult socio-economic contexts. Now, three years later, this project has expanded to embrace colleagues in Social Work and Psychology to examine the role of the personal domain in sustaining the work of service professionals in urban fringe communities.

The imposition of work into the private lives of Australians is at its highest level since the introduction of the eight-hour day. However, for service professionals working in low-income communities, this imposition can often go beyond long working hours and employee stress. Each day their motivation and wellbeing are challenged by conflict, poverty, trauma and tragedy.

This paper will present the early findings of one study with teachers within a broader project that interviewed professionals working in Adelaide's northern suburbs. While many teachers move into other professions within five years, others have been able to draw on resources from the personal domain to sustain their wellbeing and support their work for significant periods of time. Specifically, this paper will examine how teaching professionals understand, articulate and mobilise personal resources to sustain themselves in tough working environments.

The paper will also reflect on the challenges of developing an interdisciplinary study, as well as the inadequacy of both popular and disciplinary languages to engage meaningfully with the concept of the personal domain as part of the work of professionals. This inadequacy, the paper contends, is not only due to the slippery conceptual category 'personal domain', but also to the lack of discourses to interrogate this realm and the inability of different disciplines to construct a mutual lexicon to develop these discourses.

The paper hopes to feed into discussion about the importance of 'personal domain' resources in improving professional retention in urban fringe communities, in employers helping sustain the health and wellbeing of their workers, and in university educators preparing graduates that are more likely to be retained within their chosen profession.

Key Phrase:   Teachers Work and Lives

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PRO091598   ®

Paper

Keeping up with the Joneses: Taking ADHD to Radio 2GB

Brenton Prosser, University of South Australia

pMany researchers devoted to changing education policy give up on sharing their research findings through news media. To feel that one's work has been oversimplified or misrepresented wears down even the most dedicated public scholar, leaving them to wonder if contributing to debate is worth the frustration and disappointment that results. However, if academics are to improve education policy for all, they must continue to connect with the experiences of all.

This paper presents a reworking of Lusted's (1996) model of pedagogical exchange to appreciate the media's constitutive role in education policy. In this reworking, the paper replaces teacher with the media, and learner with the audience, thus creating a pedagogical triangle between the media, the audience and knowledge. The contention is that by using such a framework, scholars can think about how to conceptualise their research to shape meaning making along each exchange in the pedagogical triangle by locating themselves within it, rather than just supplying knowledge for the media to report or discuss.

The author also uses Lusted's definition of pedagogy to conceptualise an attempt to present a critique of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) through two interviews on talkback radio station 2GB. Further, the paper draws on Fairclough's (1995) model of discourse analysis to examine these interview texts as products of social identities, social relations and systems of knowledge. In doing so, the paper provides an example of an attempt to engage with education policy through the media.

The author of this paper previously worked for several years as a media/policy adviser in state politics and is currently a senior policy adviser in the Australian Senate. Consequently, the conference presentation that is based on this paper will use these unique experiences to reflect further on the relationships between education policy, politics and the media.

Key Phrase:  Innovation in Research

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RAB091255

Paper

Young Learners - Learning and Literacy in the Early Years

Margaret Brown, Janet Scull and Linda Byrnes, University of Melbourne

Being literate is both an essential skill and a human right (UNESCO 2006). The personal and social benefits of achieving high levels of literacy are widely recognised, as are the costs of low literacy achievement. However, some students leave school-education systems without achieving adequate levels of literacy thereby limiting both their life-style options and employment prospects. This project gives attention to the preschool years in which there is potential to develop skills within young children that will guard against future literacy failure.

The Young Learners' Project is a six year (2007-2012) research project which aims to identify factors in a four-year-old preschooler's educational program, home life or personal characteristics that are positively associated with the development of strong literacy outcomes in the first years of school education.

Through investigating factors within preschool children, their family and educational settings, this project addresses a significant need to ensure all children have the necessary early literacy skills to enable them to achieve to their fullest potential.

So - What are we going to do:

We are following up three cohorts of 150 preschool children in 2008, 2009, 2010 giving us an overall sample of 450 children. We are asking parents about what they did with their children. We are spending time with the children, asking them about their literacy experiences, getting measures of their language and literacy knowledges, as well as their general ability. We are asking their teachers about their beliefs, knowledge and practices around children's early literacy experiences. In addition we are collecting video data of their preschool classroom, and keeping a record of the physical, academic and social environments supported by the preschool.

When the children begin Primary School, the literacy knowledges and skill are again measured and we will be collecting their"Assessment of English"data routinely collected by government schools at the end of their first year in school. In non-government schools we will use a variety of other measures. Again we will be asking parents about how they supported their children's literacy development after they started school. We will be asking the teachers about their literacy program also. In addition, asking teachers about their beliefs, knowledge and practices.

Key Phrase: Early Childhood

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REI091512    ®

Paper

Faculty readiness for international research students: Views from the edge

Elizabeth Reid, Judi Homewood, Theresa Winchester- Seeto and Anna Reid, Macquarie University

Universities are including an ever-increasing number of higher-degree by research (HDR) candidates who come from a range of national, ethnic and educational backgrounds. Yet, sometimes the expansion has not allowed for the types of support that is needed by these candidates, particularly those from international backgrounds. In this paper, we will explore ways that faculties could support international HDR candidates throughout their candidature. We use evidence drawn from interviews with candidates and supervisors to draw a picture of their cross-cultural experiences.

From interviews with over 30 candidates and 20 supervisors, we have observed recurring themes and examined these themes against literature in the area. We used this material to develop a checklist for departments preparing to accept new international HDR candidates. The suggestions we present are relevant to the progressive stages of candidature, ranging from the department's initial preparation and training prior to candidature, right through to the assistance the department might provide in the early stages of the newly-graduated researcher's career.

Comments about a faculty's preparation prior to accepting international candidates focused predominantly on supervisor training, specifically related to cross-cultural communication, and the motives behind supervisor and candidate selection. At the outset of candidature, the primary concerns voiced were for a clear and welcoming induction, provision of a focused workspace which was integrated into a department, funding and housing assistance. Candidates frequently suggested that, as they all came from different cultural and educational backgrounds, it was important to have courses available early in the candidature that introduced them to writing academic English, developed research skills, and encouraged participation in seminars. A wide range of issues was identified as relevant throughout candidature, including receiving networking opportunities at a number of levels (within the department, interdisciplinary and internationally), language assistance (either in classes or individually), communication and communication technologies. The attitude of the department toward candidates as early researchers and its responsibilities to assist in the candidate's research career during and immediately after their candidature was also mentioned.

Key Phrase: Doctoral Education Research

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REY091135    ®

Paper

Sustainable education: Principles and practices

Peter Reynolds, WA Department of Education and Rob Cavanagh, Curtin University of Technology

This paper is theoretical and presents a synthesis of research and literature on sustainable education. The notion of sustainable education as used in this critique is about educational organisations and should not be confused with education for sustainability which can be viewed as concerning the teaching and learning of sustainability.

Sustainability often refers to persistence, sustenance or endurance. It can also refer to preservation of environments, facilities or cultures. And often is connected with development, for example the notion of sustainable development. Notwithstanding these multiple meanings, it is generally recognised that sustainability endeavours involve social, economic, and ecological considerations. Also these three forces are inter-related and inter-dependent.

When economic sustainability, social sustainability and environmental sustainability are being examined from a sustainable development perspective, it is typical for indicators to be specified. For example, economic indicators that measure monetary flow when assessing organisational sustainability. While the types of indicators vary according to the aspect of sustainability being assesses (i.e. economic, social, or environmental), these are also dependent on the object of the assessment. For example, the indicators for social sustainability applicable to a corporate organisation will be different to those for a local community organisation (e.g. city council). From this traditional orientation, the paper examines examples of indicators for different types of sustainability for different contexts.

Some alternative ways of understanding sustainability are examined. For example, types of capital (e.g. human capital, social capital and constructed capital), the construct of 'carrying capacity', systems approaches, and sustainable development as a process of learning.

Educational sustainability is then approached through understanding sustainability quotients. These quotients which can be applied to many forms of sustainability, are about the balance between what is consumed in relation to what is available. Significantly, because social capital can be created, social sustainability concerns production of human, social and constructed capital. This can be contrasted with ecological sustainability centring on the impact on finite natural capital. Educational organisations that improve the knowledge and skills of learners have the potential to profoundly affect social sustainability with consequent impacts on ecological and economic sustainability.

The paper concludes with a series of propositions about researching educational sustainability. These are structured around epistemological, a methodological, and an organisational dimensions.

Key Phrase:  General Papers

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RIC09041

Paper

The"push"and"pull"of feared and hoped for teacher future identities

Paul Richardson, Monash University

Drawing on"possible selves"theory (Markus & Nurius, 1986), this paper examines whether beginning teachers have a developed sense of the type of teacher they most want to, and most do not want to be, how these relate to behavioural and affective teaching-related outcomes, and their demographic, school contextual and internal bases. 253 Australian beginning teachers completed an online survey asking about ideal, feared and actual perceived teacher selves. 7-point Likert-type scales measured the extent to which their actual was alike ideal vs feared. Also collected were demographic and school context (location and SES) data, perceived barriers to goal achievement (school vs self-related), affective (satisfaction, liking, demand, stressfulness) and behavioural (current goal achievement, planned persistence and effort) outcome indicators.

Types of ideal selves derived by content analysis included positive role model, positive student and staff relationships and student achievement. Feared types related mostly to future disengagement and negative mood, class mismanagement and poor student relationships. Contemporary and prior teacher role-models were the major source of ideal and feared teacher selves. Overall, actual teaching selves were rated more congruent with ideal (Mdn=5) than feared (Mdn=2) selves, which were not direct opposites (rho=-.41). Congruence did not depend on gender, primary/secondary, undergraduate/graduate-entry teacher qualification, or school SES.

Seemingly, internal resources are deployed in the attainment of the ideal self, while more disparate influences affect feared self enactment. Feared self related to perceived school (rho=.32) and skills/abilities-related (rho=.33) barriers to goals, as did remote school location (rho=-.16; 1=remote-5=inner-city). Ideal self congruence related only to skills/abilities-related barriers (rho=-.16). Ideal self congruence correlated with affective and behavioural indicators, positively except for demand and stressfulness. Feared self congruence showed the opposite: correlating negatively except for stressfulness (ns with demand). Relationships were stronger for ideal than feared self congruence, and for satisfaction/liking outcomes.

I further tested for impacts of the extent to which ideal self congruence exceeded feared, to determine whether they operated as a joint system. Their discrepancy showed similar patterns to those for ideal self congruence. These correlations were also a little stronger, indicating their joint salience and importance. These beginning teachers clearly articulated ideal and feared teacher selves, whose motivational force was independently and jointly evident for affective and behavioural teaching-related outcomes. Possible selves theory provides a new perspective on motivations which impact teachers' perceived goal achievement, perceived demand and stressfulness, satisfaction and liking, and planned effort and persistence.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 12, WAT091107 Beginning teachers' personalities and identity development.

Key Phrase:   Motivation and Learning

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RIC09923    ®

Paper

Spatial orientation and sequencing of letters and numbers by young children: A Rasch Measurement Analysis

Janet Richmond and Russell Waugh, Edith Cowan University

This report is part of a much larger study of visual discrimination regarding letters, numbers, reversals, and letters and numbers in sequences and in context. Data on 37 items for Spatial Orientation for Letter Pairs and 42 items for Letter and Number Sequencing, where each item was scored in one of two categories (wrong scored zero and correct scored one), were Rasch analysed to create two linear scales. The student sample was N=324 pre-primary and primary students in Perth, Western Australia. Ten of the initial 37 items for Spatial Orientation for Letter Pairs were deleted due to item misfit statistics, leaving 27 items and six of the original 42 items for Letter and Number Sequencing were deleted due to item misfit, leaving 36 items. The data for the 27 items and the 36 items were used to create two highly reliable, linear scales (Student Separation Indices of 0.84 and 0.94, and Cronbach Alphas of 0.88 and 0.98, respectively) where the items are ordered from easy to hard. Both scales showed no statistically significant interaction of student measures on item difficulties, meaning that there was good agreement about the item difficulties along the scale and each scale was unidimensional. There was an ordered pattern of student right/wrong responses as the item difficulties increased (students needed higher abilities to answer the harder items correctly). This allows the objective identification of alphabet pairs and letter and number sequences that students found difficult to discriminate. Students who had poor visual skills of alphabet letters and numbers in pairs or sequence could be identified objectively and this would allow early teacher intervention to provide extra, tailored help for individual students.

Key Phrase:   English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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RIC09924    ®

Paper

Visual discrimination of letters in the alphabet by young children: A Rasch Measurement Analysis

Janet Richmond and Russell Waugh, Edith Cowan University

This report is part of a much larger study of visual discrimination regarding letters, numbers, reversals, and letters and numbers in sequences and in context. Data on 30 items for upper case letters and 36 items for lower case letters, where each item was scored in one of two categories (wrong scored zero and correct scored one), were Rasch analysed to create two linear scales . The student sample was N=324 pre-primary and primary students in Perth, Western Australia. Twelve of the initial 30 items of Visual Discrimination of Upper Case Letters were deleted due to item misfit statistics leaving 18 items and five of the original 36 items for Visual Discrimination of Lower Case Letters were deleted leaving 31 items. The data for the 18 items and the 31 items were used to create reliable, linear scales (Student Separation Indices of 0.55 and 0.82 and Cronbach Alphas of 0.70 and 0.82). The items were ordered from easy to hard along the scales and there was no statistically significant interaction of student measures on item difficulties along the scales, meaning that there was good agreement about the item difficulties and the scales were unidimensional. There was an ordered right/wrong sequence of student responses to the items ordered from easy to hard so that students needed increasingly higher abilities to answer more of the items correctly. This allowed the objective identification of alphabet letters that students found difficult to discriminate. Students who had poor visual discrimination skills of alphabet letters could also be identified objectively allowing for early, tailored teacher directed remedial help.

Key Phrase:   English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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RIL091574    ®

Paper

The impact of the Education Revolution on Aboriginal education - Mapping of the literature & research against government policy directions

Lynette Riley, University of Sydney

In a media release the Rudd Government, in 2008, announced an 'Education Revolution' to have impact on:

Investing in the education, skills and training of our young people and our workforce is the best way to enhance the life chances of individual Australians and boost the productivity and prosperity of our nation.

The Rudd Government is committed to delivering an education revolution, from high quality and accessible early childhood education, to quality schooling, from training and retraining our workforce, to world class higher education and research. Key priorities for the Government include:

• Improving access to early childhood education. Working cooperatively with the States and Territories
• Schools focus on achieving higher standards, greater accountability and better results. Delivering a high quality National Curriculum from Kindergarten to Year 12
• invest up to $1.5 million per high school, to create trades training centres in all of Australia's 2,650 secondary schools and up to $1 million per high school to allow every Australian student in Years 9 to 12 to have access to their own school computer, with the aim of lifting school retention rates from 75 to 90 per cent by 2020.

(Found at http://www.pm.gov.au/topics/education.cfm )

This paper explores the impact of the 'Education Revolution' on Aboriginal Education in the early childhood education and schooling sectors. In appreciating the focuses being taken it is also important to understand the influences on these focuses. The relevancy of stakeholder involvement and in assessing these priorities for Aboriginal communities the issues which need to be identified and considered are:

• Based on census statistics - population & geographic spread
• Fastest growing population
• Opportunity for Aboriginal people who do not live in remote areas
• Community educational levels & engagement in education
• Aboriginal participation & understanding of systems
• Access to quality services
• Suitable, qualified & trained educators - Aboriginal & cultural education

Based on the 'Education Revolution' focus, mapped against Aboriginal education criteria to produce sound Aboriginal educational outcomes, how effective will it be?

Key Phrase:   Indigenous Education

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ROB091382

Paper

An examination of the Tutor Program at the Australian Science and Mathematics School: Staff and student perspectives

Kelly Roberts, Flinders University

The context of human life in the twenty-first century has transformed the educational needs of the young. Contemporary research has turned to the study of existing innovative learning environments in a bid to help mainstream school education meet this challenge. This approach informed the current Innovative Learning Environments project of OECD Directorate for Education

The Australian Science and Mathematics School (ASMS) is an innovative public senior secondary school established in South Australia by the Flinders University and Department of Education and Children's Services in 2002. The ASMS was designed to address contemporary educational challenges and has a diverse population of almost 300 students.

The focus of this study was the Tutor Program at the ASMS, the central hub of their whole-school approach to pastoral care. This program aims to maximize student wellbeing, both at school and throughout life, by creating strong student-teacher relationships, partnerships with parents, and facilitating the development of the independence and self-determination students require to be resilient, lifelong learners. The program has not previously been externally examined.

The study's key objective was to explore and examine the Tutor Program through the perspectives of staff and students, including its purpose, daily operation and effectiveness in supporting student learning and development, within the context of their schooling model. A qualitative, multi-method investigation was devised to pursue this objective. Informal observation of two Tutor Groups and key informant interviews with two staff built a context for the research and revealed the school's intentions for the program. Four focus groups and a qualitative web-based questionnaire were conducted with students and staff, respectively, to gather their perspectives of the Tutor Program experience.

Students unequivocally expressed comparative satisfaction with their experience of schooling at the ASMS, discussing their experience of the Tutor Program in this context. Both teaching staff and students commented on the importance of student-teacher relationships, indicating that this is tutor dependent. Both groups were aware of the role the Tutor Program plays in supporting students to develop independence and self-determination but did not link this with building the capacity for lifelong learning, resilience and wellbeing.

Although both teaching staff and students were clear about the expectations for the daily operation of the program, neither group seemed to be clear about its central purpose or its place in the global educational challenge to meet the needs of the young in the twenty-first century.

Key Phrase:   Secondary Education

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ROB091559    ®

Paper

Outcomes of the National Accelerated Literacy Program in the Northern Territory, 2004 - 2007

William Tyler, Gary Robinson and Claire Bartlett, Charles Darwin University

The National Accelerated Literacy Program (NALP) aimed to improve educational outcomes for students, particularly Indigenous students in the Northern Territory. The National Accelerated Literacy Program (NALP) commenced in the Northern Territory in late 2004, when the Northern Territory Department of Education (NTDET) committed to implementing the program in 100 schools, training 700 teachers and reaching 10,000 students in predominantly remote locations by the end of 2008.

This paper presents major findings of the evaluation of the NALP in the Northern Territory to 2008. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the challenges faced by the evaluation of an ambitious intervention of the scale and scope of the NALP, to describe the research methods adopted and to present the main learning outcomes of the NALP in the Northern Territory (2006-2008). The findings of multilevel modelling of student outcomes point to significant proportions of Indigenous and non-indigenous students showing accelerated gains in some, mainly urban contexts, but very low rates of accelerated gain in other contexts, particularly for very remote Indigenous students with low reading age at initial assessment. Reasons for and responses indicated by this "bifurcation in outcomes" are set out in discussion of findings and the conclusions to the paper.

Key Phrase: English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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ROB091600    ®

Paper

Negotiating the maze: The challenge of contemporary Australian learning landscapes

Margaret Robertson, Mary Burston, La Trobe University and Andrew Fluck, University of Tasmania

This paper refers to organisational theory to explore and explain weaknesses and strengths of systemic change. It draws from three case studies in Australian secondary schools to illustrate the fragile and unpredictable nature of change associated with the digital contexts of learning and teaching. Although computers have been part of Australia's educational landscape for more than twenty years, the evolution of digital pedagogy continues to be a work in progress. What is envisioned in policy and what is experienced 'on the ground' at school level where change is to be implemented are distinctively different assignments (Baskin and Williams, 2006; Beetham and Sharpe, 2007; Conole and Oliver, 2007; Galloway, 2008; McGregor Tan Research, 2008; Willoughby and Wood, 2008).

Critical to the transformation of Australian education is the identification of the nature and management of change processes to discover how specific change agents (school principals, teachers, students and research team members) mobilise change factors and events in situated contexts. Personal styles, pedagogical sensibilities, motivation and attitudes of learning and teaching agents are embedded, contested, confronted and challenged on a daily basis. Our view is that theory needs to be contextualised and co-constructed in a field where hearts and heads construct the terms and rules of learning, teaching and change. The theoretical argument reflects the complexities, compromises and challenges that arose from a recent ARC project in Australian secondary schools and will illustrate how informal and formal strategies and responses construct the conditions and possibilities of change. We seek to explain the change dynamic through an alternative theory adapted from 'maze' logic. Maze logic helps to conceptualise the nature of the ad hoc responses that are part of the daily rhythm of the learning spaces we know as 'schools'.

Key Phrase:   Educational Psychology and Learning Sciences

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RYA091147

Paper

Rural and regional preservice teacher education. Effective and cost effective? Is this possible?

Josephine Ryan, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus, Mellita Jones and Nuttall Mary, Australian Catholic University, Ballarat Campus

The recent Bradley Review of Higher Education noted that appropriate provision for regional and remote needs in higher education was one of the most difficult policy issues it had to tackle (DEEWR, 2008). Research into the effectiveness of the Graduate Diploma in Education (Secondary) Rural and Regional model (GDEDRR), based at ACU's Ballarat campus, provides data on a program designed to provide effective preservice teacher education to students based in dispersed geographical locations. Moving away from an on-campus model of teacher education, the GDEDRR course combines intensive on-campus instruction with online learning and placement in rural and regional schools. The model is one which has potential to address both the financial needs of rural and regional preservice teachers, who find it difficult to relocate to study, and the problem of teacher shortages in rural and regional schools. It is also valuable to the university as a way of expanding its potential enrolees. The research tackles the question of the effectiveness of this approach through undertaking a qualitative study of the experience of the course from the perspectives of the various participants. The project: An exploration of the multimodal delivery of a secondary preservice teacher education program: perceptions of preservice teachers and school and university personnel explores the views of those involved in the first year of the course's operation in 2008.

The research findings offer insight into what is important for preservice teachers in their professional preparation. They suggest that 'in person' activities are critical components of a mixed mode course. Both the school-based work and the contact with lecturers during the intensive teaching sessions are highly valued by preservice teachers. A challenging finding for rural and regional universities is proposition that the quality of the partnership between the universities and schools as they work with preservice teachers in their practicum is fundamental to the effectiveness of the program. For it is this aspect of the program which is difficult in rural and regional contexts where lecturers and teacher supervisors are separated by distance. The research makes clear that there is urgent need of innovative teaching and learning practices which bring rural and regional teacher supervisors and university lecturers closer together in the teacher preparation partnership. The presentation will suggest that inter-university collaboration and ICT are likely sources of this innovation.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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SAL091552    ®

Paper

Defining 'Asia' - Refashioning of the Australian curriculum

Peta Salter, James Cook University

Historically, the term 'Asia' itself has been a debatable point of reference: 'while the word 'Asia' is in everyday use and is printed in atlases, it is nevertheless a widely contested concept' (AEF, 2006, p.7). It can be defined in geographical, cultural, religious, historical and linguistic terms. Couple this potential mystification with a long and tumultuous historical relationship between Australia and Asia, and the federal government's positioning of 'Asia Literacy' as a pivotal part of their 'Education Revolution', while it can be seen as a necessary and important refocussing of Australian educational policy, also becomes fraught with complications.

This latest reinvigoration of studies of Asia is defended in terms of economic necessity and national priorities, such as multiculturalism. 'Multicultural education' encompasses a broad range of scholarship and yet the task of inserting an 'Asian voice' in the multi-cultural dialogue of Australian educators is not a new idea, however a major ideological and curriculum shift may be needed to consider how studies of Asia are integral to multicultural education and whether this integration is a paradigm in which diversity, and potentially cultural boundaries are celebrated by looking at the cultural 'other' through conservative multiculturalism, or whether 'Asia literacy' is approached with a more critical pedagogy.

Promoting intercultural understanding is a challenging task for all members of our society; a challenge heightened by the problematic nature of the use of the term 'Asia' itself, and historical legacies of the use of this term in Australian society. This paper explores the problematical concept of 'Asia', and the tensions around the development of a positive relationship between Australia and Asia that defy traditional Eurocentric ties. The paper closes with questions raised on the implications of the circulation of 'Asia literacy' in Australian educational contexts.

Key Phrase:   Curriculum Theory and Development

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SAN091474    ®

Paper

Pilot test of a Quality Rating and Improvement system

Elizabeth Sandell and Vera Azarova, Minnesota State University, USA and Olga Klypa, North-eastern State University, Russian Federation

Quality of early education is an essential aspect of programs that serve young children. Research included in this review found that high quality contributes to children's learning, school readiness, social, emotional and neurological development, language proficiency, vocabulary, and a variety of learning skills that will help them succeed academically. This study examined two questions: (1) What quality rating and improvement System (QRIS) will be useful for improving early childhood education programs in Magadan Region, RU and in Minnesota, USA? and (2) What is the agreement among raters in the US and in Russia, using scores on a QRIS for early childhood education programs in Magadan Region, RU and in Minnesota, USA? The study included translation of the Global Guidelines Assessment (GGA) (ACEI, 2008) into Russian. One quality review (using the GGA) was completed for one early education program in each country. Completed data from eleven reviewers were delivered to Minnesota State University, Mankato for data entry and analysis. Half the reviewers were internal assessors on the staff of the programs that were reviewed. The other reviewers were external assessors, from the regional universities. The ratings of reviewers in each country were examined for the degree of consistency among their observations. Inter-rater agreement was determined by examining the correlations for each program area and for the total GGA. Inter-rater agreement was examined to understand the extent to which different reviewers found similar results when independently assessing the program of interest. The report includes: (1) descriptive data for reviewers and for early education programs and (2) inter-rater agreement (consistency among reviewers). This study concluded that there was excellent inter-rater agreement among reviewers in Russia and in the US. As a result, this investigation concluded that the Global Guidelines Assessment will be useful for comparing early childhood education programs in Magadan, Russian Federation and in Minnesota, USA because the GGA is easy, affordable, and reliable to use for quality improvement of early education throughout the world. Now the GGA may be used in Russia as well for future research and evaluation projects.

Key Phrase:   Early Childhood

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SCR091593    ®

Paper

Cultural competence in education service delivery: Some lessons from the Aboriginal health service sector

Margaret Joan Scrimgeour, University of South Australia and Terry Dunbar, Charles Darwin University

The concept of cultural competence is commonly referred to as the ability to interact effectively with people from different cultures. The increasingly multicultural profile of the Australian population positions the development of cultural competence by educational professionals as an important consideration within pre-service education courses and in-service professional development programs. If positive change is to be achieved in the education field then some hard questions need to be answered. It is important to know how organisations identify and support sustainable changes to staff behaviours in multilingual and multicultural service delivery contexts. It is also necessary to know what is needed to prepare human service professionals for working with diverse communities. This paper explores these questions and sets out to establish a case for government, universities, Aboriginal and other minority group communities to work together to develop sustainable strategies, systems and curricula in a joint endeavour to dramatically improve the cultural competence levels of education and other human service professionals.

Recent research and innovations involving the development of codes of practice and guidelines for the development of cultural competence and cultural safety within the Aboriginal health field in Australia provide potentially useful guidance for those concerned with implementing change in the field of education. In particular, we will draw on findings from a recent large scale cultural security qualitative study involving Aboriginal community members and service providers in the Northern Territory. This research indicated that the litmus test as to whether a place is considered culturally safe is born out by the people who use the service, who are in the less powerful position, who are from a different cultural background, and who define health and wellbeing in different ways. We will also describe interventions in place at the University of South Australia that aim to engender cultural competency with respect to Aboriginal peoples as a core objective across the institution. Key elements of these interventions include attention to the development of individual cultural competency through the development of awareness, attitudes, knowledge, and skills. In terms of developing a program for action within the education field we suggest that local level community input is essential to the development of collaborative models of education and training that will effectively prepare education service providers to work with Aboriginal and other minority group members in culturally competent ways.

Key Phrase:   Indigenous Education

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SEL09063

Paper

A question of form: challenging deficit constructions of different ways of knowing

Sam Sellar and Trevor Gale, University of South Australia

In neoliberal accounts, students themselves are often blamed for their disengagement from schooling. So when low student achievement and access to higher education is highly correlated with low socioeconomic status-as it is in most OECD nations-the problem is usually explained in terms of these students' lack of aspiration and/or capacity for educational success. In this article we offer a different explanation for the reproduction of social and economic privilege through education. At one level, it is a familiar refrain. Educational inequalities tend to be produced by education systems. Prevalent in this, universities-particularly the most prestigious-exert downward influence on the typically dominant knowledge content privileged in secondary school curricula. We add that universities also influence forms of thought valorised in schooling, and argue that the 'ways of knowing' legitimized by educational institutions are more indicative of privilege in schooling, and society more broadly, than are knowledge contents. Following Deleuze and Guattari (1987), and engaging with debates about the coloniality of knowledge, we suggest that the formal character of thought is generally assumed to be both natural and universal. As a result, difference is more readily acknowledged in terms of diverse applications of thought-the production of different knowledge content-than it is at the level of thought itself. We suggest that granting equal legitimacy to different ways of knowing is more challenging to the dominant 'common sense' and the logic of educational institutions. However, doing so is an important aspect of efforts to avoid deficit constructions of students from non-dominant cultural groups and to provide more inclusive forms of education.

To illustrate the complexity of these issues, and the tensions inherent in efforts to recognize the legitimacy of different ways of knowing, we examine a recent review of South Australia's Certificate of Education (SACE): the qualification received by students completing the final year of secondary schooling, which plays a significant role in determining their capacity to access tertiary education. The SACE review proposes policy reforms that may enable mediation between school and university in more inclusive and engaging ways for students from low socioeconomic status and subaltern cultural backgrounds, while acknowledging that such efforts are also constrained by the ways in which universities determine 'what counts' as legitimate knowing and knowledge in the final instance. We develop our argument through analysis of both the policy text and its context of production.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 20, GAL091198 Aspirations for higher education: exploring strategies for widening participation.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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SHE091201    ®

Paper

Staff perceptions of desirable 'teacher qualities' for student teachers

Lynn Sheridan, Notre Dame University

Interviews were conducted with three Teacher Educators in order to contextualise a broader study on the development of preservice teacher perceptions of desirable 'teacher qualities' during completion of an undergraduate degree. The Teacher Educators each had a different specialisation in the students' preferred teaching area. Findings from these interviews complemented other information derived from student focus groups and surveys. Staff interviews were necessary in order to understand how the courses undertaken by the students' were developed and hence, to gain an understanding of the 'frame of reference' for the research. In addition, this preliminary work helped the researcher to better comprehend the 'how and why' of implementation of the specific programs of study that the students undertook with these staff.

Thematic analysis was used to compare and contrast staff perceptions of 'teacher qualities' that they each valued. This research revealed a commonality between the perceptions of staff, and a few notable 'points of difference'. Interestingly the staff responses to set questions were often situated in their own stories and values rather than being expressed in overt statements. For example the staff approached their responses via statements like"here is my story and this is how I got to this point", or"let me tell you how I prefer to do this".

The following 5 key themes emerged:

1. Development of a Personal Philosophy
2. Importance of Authentic Experiences and Credibility as a Teacher
3. Professionalism
4. Strength of Pedagogical Approach
5. Comprehensive Grasp of Content Knowledge
6. Point of Difference for each: Creativity, Life Long Learner, Networker

The importance of the broader research is in developing a clearer understanding of pre-service teachers' perceptions and experiences during their professional preparation for teaching, in order to inform practice in teacher education. In addition, if we understand perceptions of 'good teaching' held by Teacher Educators, we may better understand the way staff manage their practice within education sector constructs, like Teacher Education Course Accreditation frameworks, and/or during curriculum development in higher education.

University programs differ with the composition of the staff cohorts; this is an artifact of the University environment. This work explores a component of the potential strengths and tensions resulting from the aligned and contrasting 'perceptions' of relevant stakeholders (lecturers, registration bodies and schools). These perceptions may vary from the students' own beliefs of what is valuable to learn.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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SLE091526    ®

Paper

Customising explicit outcomes from policy objectives: An action research guide to making funding work

June Slee and Stephanie Smith, Charles Darwin University

In June 2008, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) called for pilot proposals to improve student literacy and numeracy outcomes in low socio-economic and Indigenous school communities. DEEWR emphasised that proposals should be underpinned by evidence-based research, include provision for independent evaluation and, have the capacity to generalise to broader learning communities. A joint initiative between Charles Darwin University (CDU) and Catholic Education Northern Territory, received funding for its project Strong Foundations, which aimed at providing customised mentoring and resource development to twelve early learning centres in the Northern Territory. An action research approach was chosen to drive the Strong Foundation project because it would involve practitioners as researchers and have the capacity to solve practical problems with evidence generated by research. Furthermore, the integration of research and action would produce organic change agents which would be essential in this context. This paper responds to an early research finding from one of the twelve programs developed under the umbrella of the Strong Foundations' project: Arrurle Anthurre - Once Upon a Dreamtime. Trialling over a two-year period in the pre-school of a very remote Indigenous Catholic Community School, this program aims to strengthen early childhood pedagogy and the quality of developmental and learning experiences. During its second six weekly' review, the research team comprising pre-school, CDU and Catholic Education educators identified the need for a major change to the program. At that stage they were following a triadic model comprising DWEER's, Strong Foundations' and their own objectives and outcomes. It had become obvious that none of these was situation-specific enough for the diverse and complex setting in which the Arrurle Anthurre program was being implemented. The team decided that each DEEWR objective would be much more attainable if accompanied by explicit outcomes customised for its pre-school's setting, staff and students. This would also provide a useful platform for internal and external monitoring as well as guiding generalisation to other similar settings.

A work-in-progress, the primary purpose of this paper is to disseminate the process of developing explicit outcomes which operationalise DEEWR's objectives and in turn, facilitate the evaluation process and give greater accountability for how funding is spent. Through this paper, the action research team's experiences will be shared with other pilot schools and the wider school community as required by DEEWR's reporting expectations.

If you don't know where you are going any road will take you there. Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

Key Phrase:   Early Childhood

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SMI091046

Paper

Pedagogical complexions - Learning to teach between cultures

Stephen Smith, Simon Fraser University

The ideas of place-centered pedagogy and embodied practices frame this study. According to the first idea, teaching is done best when attentive to local situations and when drawing upon contextual, regional and cultural understandings. Teaching is not only about addressing something with someone; it is also essentially about being somewhere, somehow, in some particular place. The second idea is that teaching is an activity, a practice, and essentially an enactment of purposes that is composed literally and figuratively of postures, positions, gestures and expressions that influence the behaviors of others, yield bodies of knowledge, and otherwise realize corporeal affects.

Place sensibilities and embodied sensitivities converge most evidently when teaching in places other than those to which we have become accustomed. In other words, commonplace pedagogy is complexioned in responsiveness to children and youth of different cultures, ethnicities, and races. Pedagogical complexions is then a third idea which connects to color as a social, cultural and political signifier and to evident hue, tone, and accent. This idea suggests that teachers become sensible about cultural diversities, mindful of place histories and socio-political realities, yet be sensitive to the particular ways in which children and youth of different cultures and place histories move and sound and play and behave with one another.

Pedagogical complexions come into finer focus when learning to teach between cultures. This is the case for Canadian student teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, Port of Spain, Trinidad, and Dalian, China where, for nine weeks, they live and learn to become teachers. It is also the case for immigrant teachers who seek professional certification in Canada. In both cases, participants learn to teach between cultures - one they have left and the other in which they now are immersed. They come to see classrooms complexioned by different colors, ethnicities and races and to enact a pedagogy that is differently accented, differently toned, and differently postured, positioned, gestured and expressioned.

The present research project presents, via narrative examples and phenomenological analysis, the configurations of learning to teach between cultures. Focusing on reported pedagogical encounters where cultural differences are apparent, the analysis shows how the postures, positions, gestures and expressions of teaching can be actively, consciously and critically complexioned. Student teachers at international sites and immigrant teachers to Canada learn to teach in places where there is an embodied awareness of 'the other' and the opportunity to color, tone and complexion a pedagogical practice.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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SMI091523    ®

Paper

The rollercoaster ride of establishing a middle years of schooling beginning teaching identity: A narrative account

Neville Smith, University of Queensland

The aim of this study was to explore how middle years of schooling educated beginning teachers perceive their identity construction through teaching within their first year at school, generally referred to as the induction period. Internalised individual factors such as perceived teaching beliefs and practices were investigated in accordance with professional issues of self interests and socio-cultural interests that challenge and confront beginning teachers. Framed in the background was an analysis of socialising factors within a school organisation, namely induction programs and practices and the influence this had on the construction of a teaching identity.

The study involved a sample of 4 Middle Years of Schooling teachers who were in their first year of teaching and working within a different range of contextual school organisations. The study utilised narrative research to explore these four teachers' stories which is considered an effective analytical tool to gather powerful and rich data in the construction of identity. Kelchtermans & Ballet (2002) study on beginning teachers' beliefs, ideas and practices was used as the theoretical framework to analyse how perceived beliefs and practices impact on beginning teaching identity through categorising and comparing interview data.

The results from this study identify the rollercoaster ride of one of the beginning middle years of schooling teacher's identity formation. It highlighted the influential importance that perceived teaching beliefs and practices (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002) has on the development of a teaching identity when framed against powerful school organisational professional issues that confront and challenge these beliefs.

Jack's preconceived ideology consisted of a strong adherence to a middle year of schooling philosophical approach to teaching ideas and practices. It is when he experiences the full realities of his first teaching year that he questions this particular approach in terms of his beliefs and practices and of the construction of a firm teaching identity. As he reflected back on his first teaching year he is able to overcome these self doubts by recognising that his beliefs and ideas have modified, but his original philosophical approach remained largely intact and confirmed. He then is able to re-identify strongly with being a middle years of schooling teacher.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 25, MCC091203 Who am I and where am I going?: Snapshot moments of developing middle years teacher identity.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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SON091377

Paper

Peer Bullying - Anxiety of social exclusion in a real-virtually mediated school life

Dorte Marie Søndergaard, University of Aarhus

Why do school children bully? What kind of constitutive powers are involved in the phenomenon? This paper introduces social angst of exclusion as a key concept in a social psychological approach to peer bullying. Social inclusion involves a number of, also emotionally mediated, interactions and practices - among these a mutual production of recognition and dignity. In school classes pervaded by anxiety of social exclusion however these interacting means tend to be replaced by an increased production of contempt and disgust. While the production of contempt may seem to alleviate social anxiety by its promise of easily read and managed premises for inclusion, it tends to simultaneously produce an intensified anxiety connected with the potential of being excluded. This intensified anxiety begs for more alleviation. In school classes with a high level of social anxiety struggles around premises for in- and exclusion may consequently increase and under certain circumstances tilt into dehumanisation as a focused strategy in relation to particular others. Movements like these risk to open into potential practices of bullying, partly because the dehumanised other eventually falls outside of emphatic relevance. The dehumanised other will in this way be embraced by the abjection (Judith Butler) desired by the socially panicked group of the 'still' included.

Anxiety of social exclusion emerges from a number of intra-acting (Karen Barad) forces, including social, subjective, discursive and material aspects of as well child as adult (professional and parental) contributions to everyday life in the school class. The paper will, however, among all these forces focus a particular dimension, namely the virtual practices and media products offered to and taken up by the children. Video games, TV-programs and movies offer cultural models and interpretive repertoires to the children, including models of social positioning, of relating and emotional responding together with repertoires of norms and evaluation standards, models for crises and conflict navigation etc. Children on their hand approach, and choose, read, and rejects, mix etc. these offers in real-virtually mediated processes of subjectification and relating. Such processes therefore become a crucial part of any analyses aiming to understand the complexities of bullying in school. The paper is based on interviews with and observations among app. 100 school children (8-12 years of age), interviews with teachers, headmasters, parents, and observations of video gaming practices in spare time institutions.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 36, HAA091381 Exploring bullying in schools.

Key Phrase:   Sociocultural and Activity Theory

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STA091341    ®

Paper

Pathway planning: Examining the benefits and outcomes of a Traineeship and Apprenticeship Pathway Program

Martin Stalker and Thao Le, University of Tasmania

The"Tasmania: A State of Learning"structures were borne from widespread discussion with the Tasmanian community between 2000 and 2003 to identify the optimum model for lifelong learning within the state. At Secondary High School level, with compelling research supporting the benefits of education and training beyond Grade 10, a major component of this initiative is guided by legislation introduced in 2005. This legislation is a response to the communities overwhelming support which now requires students exiting from Grade 10 to participate in training and learning. To support this initiative each government high school now has the additional resource of a pathway planning officer who conducts a minimum of 3 interviews of 45 minute duration with each student through years 8, 9 and 10. This pathway planning process now accurately identifies student vocational interests.

Utilising the strengths of this structure a partnership has been developed between the new Tasmanian Polytechnic institution and Government High Schools to complement student vocational interests and target skills shortage areas within the Australian workforce. This innovative program has drawn plaudits from each of the key stakeholders due to its unique interactive pedagogy and the breakthrough in industry/training/education interface to create this educative model. The program provides students prior to electing an Academy or Polytechnic educative direction with the opportunity to gain an extended experience in one of fifteen vocational options. The program has been so popular that schools have dedicated Traineeship and Apprenticeship Pathway Program (TAPP) classes within their senior curriculum timetables. The educative structures created allow students to complete units of competence from within training packages for apprenticeships and traineeships qualifications accredited within the Australian Qualifications Framework. This paper examines the outcomes from the program and the schools results on student involvement from attitudinal and academics perspectives.

Key Phrase:   Vocational Education and Training

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STA091347    ®

Paper

Pathway Planning: Examining the holistic and academic benefits of a targeted professional vocational program

Martin Stalker and Thao Le, University of Tasmania

The"Tasmania: A State of Learning"structures were borne from widespread discussion with the Tasmanian community between 2000 and 2003 to identify the optimum model for lifelong learning within the state. At Secondary High School level, with compelling research supporting the benefits of education and training beyond Grade 10, a major component of this initiative is guided by legislation introduced in 2005. This legislation is a response to the communities overwhelming support which now requires students exiting from Grade 10 to participate in training and learning. To support this initiative each government high school now has the additional resource of a Pathway Planning Officer who conducts a minimum of 3 interviews of 45 minute duration with each student through years 8, 9 and 10. This pathway planning process now accurately identifies student vocational interests.

Utilising the strengths of this structure a partnership has been developed between Engineers Australia, Tasmania Division, the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Education Department to target 32 students across the state in the field of engineering each year. This innovative program has drawn plaudits from each of the key stakeholders due to its unique interactive pedagogy and the breakthrough in industry/government interface to create this educative model. This paper examines the holistic learning that is woven into the fabric and aligns this with a comparison in academic results of the students involved in this educational initiative compared to those of similar academic standard not involved.

Key Phrase:   Vocational Education and Training

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TAY09993    ®

Paper

Re-theorising the 'nature' of childhood

Affrica Taylor, University of Canberra

When Alan Prout wrote The Future of Childhood (2005), he claimed that the study of contemporary childhoods requires a broad set of intellectual resources and an interdisciplinary approach. This paper is positioned within the interdisciplinary tradition of the 'new social studies of childhood' promoted by Prout and other childhood scholars (Kehily 2004; Cannella and Kincheloe 20002). It draws upon philosophy, social theory, history, anthropology, media studies and in particular human geography to bring fresh new perspectives to the crucial relationship between two fundamental concepts that educators often take for granted: 'childhood' and 'nature'. In so doing, it works towards re-theorising the 'nature' of childhood.

Over the last three or four centuries, concepts of childhood and nature have become increasingly co-implicated within the structuring dualisms of western thinking. It is now almost impossible to think about childhood as anything but a natural and universal life stage, distinguished by its radical difference from adulthood. It is also extremely difficult to evoke the notion of childhood without simultaneously evoking the notion of nature, and positioning children and nature in contradistinction to adulthood and culture.

In order to de-naturalise childhood, this paper charts some of the epistemological convergences of childhood and nature within these dualistic framings. It begins with the late eighteenth century philosophies of Jean-Jacque Rousseau, whose romantic conflation of childhood with nature, and the radical separation of both 'pure nature' and 'innocent children' from the evils of 'adult society' has had an enduring influence upon modern western thinking about childhood as well as about nature.

To illustrate Rousseau's legacy, and to demonstrate how the entwined epistemological trajectories of 'pure nature' and 'innocent children' are perpetuated in the popular imaginary, the paper critiques some key representations of natural childhood innocence that are perpetuated through children's popular culture.

While childhood studies scholars have gone a long way towards retheorising childhood by pointing to its historical and cultural construction, not a lot of attention has been paid to its key collateral term, nature. This paper seeks to redress this gap by drawing upon interesting new re-theorisings of nature that have taken place within human geography (Castree 2005). After outlining geography's new critiques of the 'pure nature' assumptions that reside within popular wilderness discourses, the paper draws fruitful comparisons between the 'purist' underpinnings of wilderness and childhood innocence.

Through conducting this cross-disciplinary conversation, the paper offers educators new ways of thinking about the nature of childhood and most importantly, for thinking beyond its purist dichotomous framings.

Key Phrase:   Educational Philosophy and Theory

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TEO091479

Paper

Understanding the use of Socratic Questioning to enhance the learning of Biology for High-ability Learners in Raffles Institution, Singapore

Chai Yaw Teo, Raffles Institute, Singapore

This is a small-scale exploratory study attempting to understand the use of Socratic Questioning with high-ability learners from Raffles Institution (RI). The research triangulated the data collected via lesson observations and interviews with curriculum experts from the Ministry of Education, heads of departments in Raffles Institution and a focused group discussion with selected students from the Raffles Academy group comprising top students from Biology. Curriculum experts and highly experienced teachers shared their views about the use of Socratic Questioning to enhance critical thinking with particular application to the teaching of Biology. The data indicated that while students found value in the use of Socratic Questioning in enhancing learning in science, there is a need to examine more closely how the science curriculum is structured and delivered. A recommendation is put forth for the teachers from the Science and Philosophy departments to engage in closer collaboration and professional learning in the development of quality science education.

During the focused group discussion, students in the RA Biology class commented that after using Socratic Questioning to challenge learners to think broadly about an issue, discussions should be tied back to current reality. This idea of linking scientific learning to societal and global context is an important recommendation put forth by Cavallo (2008).

The traditional approach of"4W1H"-"what, why, when, where and how"is an integral part of teaching practices in science. What is lacking in the traditional"4W1H"approach is that learning stops at"knowing". In comparison, the Socratic Questioning technique focuses on challenging the thinking process, rather than knowing the content. Students will eventually learn to examine their own thinking for clarity and this would serve to motivate them to understand science at a higher level. The deeper understanding of science from the perspective of Nature of Science and the effective use of Socratic Questioning will lead to a fuller understanding of scientific concepts and processes and thus enhance overall scientific literacy of the students. While in Singapore, schools have been successful in improving achievement scores in the national examinations and students do well in international measures such as the TIMSS, as this study shows, teachers need to do more to teach and empower students in the thinking process besides managing facts.

A colleague from the Philosophy Department in Raffles Institution who teaches the ethical issues related to abortion noted that the transferability of Socratic Questioning across academic subjects is high. He identified parallel aspects and tools such as logic and deduction can help the students in science especially in refining their experimentation and research approaches in science.

Richard Paul put forth the importance of developing cognitive and affective dimensions. Socratic teaching provides a platform for students to be challenged in terms of their ability to think. It allows the inculcation of various intellectual traits such as intellectual humility, intellectual humility and empathy.

Key Phrase:   General Papers

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TOB091308    ®

Paper

Codes of conduct and ethical dilemmas in teacher education

Stephen Tobias, University of New England and Helen Boon, James Cook University

This paper reports on a research study into ethics and moral reasoning in schools and undergraduate teacher education. Since the 1970s the utility and efficacy of ethics curricula in undergraduate courses have received heightened global attention. During this time, an ethics boom has occurred designed to counter the disappearance of ethics education and the marginalization of moral education from higher education. This boom, witnessed in most professional programs, is also notable for its absence from teacher education programs in Australia. There is a considerable gap in ethics literature for teachers. This is extraordinary considering the plethora of educational dilemmas and subsequent decision making and reasoning that is currently required for moral and ethical teaching. It seems that undergraduate teacher preparation, in this complex field, presently satisfies teaching authorities requirements by implementing professional standards as derived from global codes of conduct. However, many preservice teachers report of having observed what they believe are unethical experiences in schools and are unsure of how to deal with these situations. Proactive foundational ethics experiences that develop moral reasoning and decision making skills is suggested as a fundamental means of enabling future teachers to cope with what seems to be a deepening area of concern in schools.

This investigation is centred on a regional Australian university's teacher education course and seeks to understand how undergraduate teachers' developed moral and ethical reasoning skills prior to entering the classroom as qualified teachers. The study found that preservice and classroom teachers were observing or experiencing unethical behaviour in schools. Many felt underprepared to cope with ethical dilemmas or school-based situations that they personally felt were wrong. It is suggested in this study that all preservice teachers require an explicit understanding of contemporary issues such as bullying, cheating, violence and harassment and how to proactively deal with these situations before they begin teaching. It is also argued that ethics education should be taught as an explicit and intensive subject, perhaps as a foundation unit, rather than by embedding codes of conduct or professional standards into individual subjects, as is currently the case. The ultimate goal is to facilitate dialogue and to prepare undergraduates to meet their professional obligations with a clearer understanding of the ethical contingencies. The study employed a confluence of qualitative and quantitative instruments. A curriculum audit, focus group interviews with preservice teachers and semi-structured interviews with classroom teachers indicated that teacher education and professional development is lacking and that open and unambiguous instruction is required in ethics education.

Key Phrase:   Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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TSA09936

Paper

Students as evolving professionals - Students perceptions of the evolving professional (EP) concept as a professional socialization approach

Annetta Tsang, The University of Queensland

The Evolving Professional (EP) concept recognizes students as evolving oral health and dental professionals with specific professional attributes that must be developed and internalized in order to enhance students' potential for success upon graduation. It focuses and adds significance, coherence and clarity to students' professional socialization in dentistry and oral health. Professional socialization involves the acquisition of professional attributes and the development of a specific professional identity that defines self and aligns with community expectations. The primary tenets of the EP concept are:1) early professional socialization empowers students by providing a context and reasons for deep learning and motivating them to strive for excellence; 2) a clearly defined professional identity is recognized as a significant determining factor in relations to work-readiness, recruitment, retention, job satisfaction and work-related motivation and 3)"the way of being"a professional cannot be assumed as a"natural by-product"of tertiary education but must be explicitly developed and practiced.

The aims of this study are to examine students' perceptions of the EP concept as a professional socialization approach, compare the perceptions of dentistry students vs. oral health students and compare the perceptions of first year, second year and third year Bachelor of Oral Health students.

Students were asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire during class time in Week 2, Week 5 and Week 9 of the semester. The questionnaire contained both open-ended and categorical questions. Analyses were performed quantitatively using descriptive statistics (Microsoft EXCEL 2007) and qualitatively using computer-assisted content analysis (Leximancer v.3.07).

A total of 145 students participated in this study. Results indicate that students support the EP concept as an effective professional socialization approach. Over 85% of students across all three years and two programs stated in the Week 5 and Week 12 questionnaires that being treated as an EPs is important, engaged students and imparted confidence and that thinking of themselves as EPs motivated student learning and inspired excellence. Students were also convinced that the effectiveness of the EP concept relied not only in students' self-perceptions but also from staff, who must believe and treat students as evolving professions. Comparison between dentistry students vs. oral health students did not yield any significant differences. Comparison between first year, second year and third year Oral Health students indicated that whilst the third year did support the EP concept, they felt that it was less relevant to them because they have already developed professional confidence, collaborative team skills and effective communication skills but they enjoyed the leadership development opportunities and being peer mentors. In conclusion, dentistry and oral health students perceived that the EP concept is beneficial and important for professional socialization and the development of a positive professional self-identity.

Key Phrase:   Nursing and Health Education

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VIC091581    ®

Paper

Mastering the challenge of literacy, numeracy and science education: A critical analysis of the Masters Report

Malcolm Vick and Lai Kuan Lim, James Cook University

The recently released Masters Report, A Shared Challenge: Improving Literacy, Numeracy and Science Learning in Queensland Primary Schools, responds to the Queensland government's concern about the state's poor performance in the 2008 NAPLAN and 2007 TIMMS tests. The report contextualises and analyses the problem and formulated five recommendations which are currently under consideration by government.

This paper analyses the Report as a policy document. It draws on understandings of policy as strategic and tactical responses to political contingencies, and an analytical approach which focuses on the ways policies define that problem they appear simply to address. Thus, it seeks to illuminate how the Report frames and represents the 'problems' of, and its recommendations for education reform in Queensland.

We draw attention to the Report's discursive strategies for establishing the truth of its account of the problem, and the relations among different aspects that account, and its recommended solutions. We considers its use of research literature and statistical data, its use of comparative methods, its own primary 'field' data, the relations between the comparator countries and the sources used as models for solutions to the problems. The Report's methodological tools constitute practical strategies for establishing its own regime of truth, which sets the conditions for the acceptance and implementation of its preferred policies and practices.

The paper argues that the Report's representation of Queensland's education performance constructs student performance as an issue of teaching quality and a domain of accountability. While the Report recognises a range of social and systemic factors shaping the results, it disregards these in both its definition of the problem and its formulation of recommendations; this involves slippage between analytical considerations of 'truth' and political concern about 'acceptability'. By placing social context out of the frame of analysis, the Report sets the conditions for privileging of particular policy choices, as exemplified by the five recommendations which are directed at teachers' training, practice, and growth. This analysis, then, illuminates the way the Report forecloses a range of alternative or complementary policy responses to the state of education in Queensland and opens up space for continued discussion of those alternatives.

Key Phrase:   General Papers

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WAL091426

Paper

Multiliteracies as a transdisciplinary curriculum practice

Christopher Walsh, Deakin University and James Albright, The University of Newcastle

This study builds on and contributes to work around Multiliteracies approaches to literacy education. Although multiliteracies has been well-theorized in recent years, few studies have researched the practical aspects of developing a curriculum of multiliteracies where students engage in transformed practice through multimodal design. This presentation presents multiliteracies as a transdisciplinary curriculum practice, drawing on data from a 3-year study in an urban middle school in the United States. The data moves the field of literacy research forward by describing how students moved beyond simply engaging in critique to the multimodal design of a variety of school and media texts. Employing Bourdieuian concepts of social capital and academic field, the struggles around learning to inhabit certain school discourses are explored. The analytic focus on school discourses enables another contribution. The study explores the implications of re-designing teacher education courses to attend to the new forms of meaning-making inherent in young people's lives outside of school.

Key Phrase:   Curriculum Theory and Development

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WAN091143    ®

Paper

Teaching materials and authentic language: A report of an action research study

Yanjun Wang, University of Tasmania and Chunmei Ma, Xi'an International Studies University

Chinese has by now been considered an increasingly important global language, and in addition, Chinese online users are rapidly multiplying. It is clear that Putonghua will become more and more essential for online communication and e-commerce. China's growing importance in the increasingly global community gives many foreigners an impetus to learn Chinese. In Australia, Chinese is recognized as one of the fastest growing languages and has one of the largest groups of non-English background speakers. How are we to make full use of this opportunity brought about by the confluence of positive international situations? The tonal language with its characters bearing no resemblance to European scripts makes it one of the most complicated languages in the world to learn. In this context, more efficient and effective ways of learning the language are of vital importance. The goal for teaching Chinese is to train students' ability to apply speaking, listening, reading and writing skills in this language. The development of multiple language skills is needed to teach students Chinese as well as its associated culture. In the field of second language acquisition, the main focus is to cultivate students' communicative competence in real-life situations.

A case study was conducted to examine the significance of teaching authentic materials in a language classroom. Participants from a local college and a university were invited to participate in workshops to experience this flexible and less stressful approach of learning a second language. This paper will discuss the results of the workshops which were twofold, first, to determine whether or not students like this approach; second, if there are differences among the participants as they relate to this pedagogical approach. Finally we draw the conclusion that the implementation of this methodological approach is practical, feasible and enjoyable for the participants. There were differences between these two groups in performance; however, both groups showed that this methodology was helpful in Chinese language learning.

Key Phrase:   English Education, Literacy and Languages (including TESOL, LOTE and ESL)

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WAN091218    ®

Paper

Using photovoice for assessment in teacher education and examining the impacts of globlalisation on China

Ting Wang, University of Canberra

Photovoice is a qualitative participatory research methodology that puts cameras in the hands of participants to document the realities of their daily lives. This article explores the efficacy of Photovoice as an assessment method in teacher education and utility of Photovoice as an innovative qualitative method to examine the impacts of globalization on Chinese society, culture, education, and training. A group of sixty Chinese students who were enrolled in an Australian transnational program, Master of Education, participated in this Photovoice project in 2008. The Photovoice narratives and photographs, participants' reflections and evaluations provide evidence that Photovoice can be used as an effective and participatory assessment tool in teacher education. This study suggests that Photovoice may contribute to understanding the impacts of globalization in ways not addressed by other approaches. The methodology offers a novel way to tap the creativity of people from diverse perspectives. This article also highlights the need for the academics in higher education to provide context-specific, transferable, and innovative assessment and evaluation designed to promote learners' critical thinking and problem solving skills in a globalized world.

Key Phrase:   Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation

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WAY091149

Paper

Interactive whiteboards and pedagogy in primary classrooms

Elizabeth Lilley, Sophie Jonco, Lisa Mauric and Caddie Ruster, University of Sydney

A current phenomenon in Australian school education is the rapid adoption of Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) as a multimedia teaching-tool. Existing research (predominately from the UK) has mostly focussed on the impact of IWBs on student engagement, with some attempts being made to assess effects on academic performance. A critical aspect that remains under-researched is the complex area of the teacher's IWB pedagogy and the consequences for learning environments.

This symposium presents for discussion, the findings of four small-scale studies conducted by a group of Honours students that used a variety of qualitative methods to investigate different aspects of IWB pedagogy from a range of educational perspectives: a) Classroom interaction patterns, b) Teacher attitudes and age, c) Development of pedagogy, and, d) Teacher creativity. Collectively, these studies offer a range of viewpoints on the use of IWB for teaching - from primary students, teachers, a principal and an IWB trainer, as well as observations of classrooms. The purpose of the symposium is to present the overlap of findings from these seemingly diverse studies as well highlighting the unique findings. Finally, against the background of existing research literature, several key questions will be suggested for further discussion and research.

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WIL091156

Paper

Leading and learning: Developing ecologies of educational practice

Anne Wilkinson, Stephen Kemmis, Ian Hardy, Christine Edwards-Groves and Penelope Cooke, Charles Sturt University, Alison Lee and David Boud, University of Technology, Sydney Discussant: Susan Groundwater-Smith

This symposium explores advances in practice theory that offer new ways of understanding education in a range of settings. In particular, it will explore the notion of 'ecologies of practice', a conceptual development beyond the notion of 'practice architectures' proposed by Kemmis and Smith (2008). Ecologies of practice are distinctive interconnected webs of human social activities (characteristic arrangements of sayings, doings and relatings) that are mutually-necessary to order and sustain a practice as a practice of a particular kind and complexity (e.g., a progressive educational practice). Such ecologies of practice are evident within particular social contexts and particular 'site ontologies' (Schatzki, 2003, 2005), that is, as the product of the localised 'sites' where they are enacted, which are simultaneously an intrinsic part of the broader social conditions under which they are undertaken.The notion of ecologies of practice allows researchers to explore the interconnections and interdependencies between different kinds of social practices (educational administration and education, for example) and between different participants' practices (teachers and learners, for example). This innovative practice theory perspective permits, for example, analysis of the transformation of students in terms of the dynamics of their changed practices (their academic learning practices or their social practices, for instance) rather than simply in terms of changed but static 'learning outcomes'.The papers in the symposium will exemplify and critically explore the potential and limitations of practice theory, especially the notion of ecologies of practice, for education and educational research. Wilkinson, Hardy, Edwards-Groves and Kemmis will present preliminary findings from a study of the interconnections between leadership, professional development, teaching and (student) academic and social practices. Cooke will present findings from a study examining informal adult education practices in a local community-based Landcare group. Lee and Boud will present findings in relation to examining the boundary between the professional and the client in which professional services are understood as being co-produced, rather than more traditional conceptions of professional provider/client/consumer.

Key Phrase:

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WIL091573

Paper

The CRIMSPL - Context Rich Integrated Maths and Science Professional Learning Project

Sue Wilson, Australian Catholic University

The CRIMSPL - Context Rich Integrated Maths and Science Professional Learning Project aimed to improve resources and the quality of teaching in mathematics and science, and to increase the real-life context of education in these areas. It delivered teacher professional development (PD) workshops on creating and using open-ended investigations and problem-based activities. These sessions introduced teachers to innovative ways of teaching and stimulated reflection and discussion about modification of their own teaching practices. It established collaboration between six metropolitan and four rural schools, creating innovative real-world classroom resources written and trialled by practising teachers fully integrate mathematics and science. Workshops on the Statements of Learning and Professional Standards helped stimulate discussion of ways to make these connections. Teachers shared observations of student activities and samples of student work.

The professional development model enabled connections to be established between CRIMS project teachers, educational consultants, teacher professional associations, CRIRO CREST, Australian Science Innovations, and the Academy of Science personnel. The project was the stimulus for a new presentation of the TLF Learning Objects with a focus on integrating mathematics and science.

Discussion with colleagues, examination of student work samples and reflection supported modification of teachers' own teaching practice. The teachers were committed to quality teaching and the benefit of using open-ended tasks in the classroom. However, change requires time, to develop new resources, and to discuss and reflect on the path of change that is suitable for each teacher and in the context of their students. Teachers said that they appreciated the time that the project gave them to develop some CRIMS tasks. Teacher feedback served as a form of evaluation, indicating a continuing need for teachers to be provided with further professional development workshops on creating and using open-ended investigations and problem-based activities.

Teacher feedback has described ongoing change within schools. Teachers reported that pedagogical change was supported by the professional learning activities. Rural teachers in particular commented on the value of the collaboration with other teachers, and the benefits of the PD workshops on contextual open-ended investigations, problem-based learning, constructivism and student-centred learning. Teachers reflected on, and identified the factors that encouraged, inhibited and prevented the spread of innovative practices in their schools. Outcomes included improved resources and increasing the real-life contexts in mathematics and science. Activities developed for the project were disseminated internationally and nationally through conference presentations and the project website.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium MCL091524 Addressing pedagogical and staff development issues in rural and regional schools: Initiatives based on partnerships and community building.

Key Phrase:   Information and Communication Technology

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WIL091590

Paper

Bibliotherapy: Mathematics anxiety and meta-affect

Sue Wilson, Australian Catholic University

Mathematics anxiety has been identified as a specific learning difficulty characterised by feelings that mathematics cannot make sense, of helplessness, and lack of control over one's learning. This anxiety has been associated with receiving inappropriate teaching practices, and a belief that success in mathematics is determined by ability rather than effort. Many pre-service primary or early childhood teachers have anxiety about mathematics. Failure in mathematics can have a powerful emotional impact that may extend far beyond the mathematics classroom. For potential teachers of mathematics this emotional impact becomes doubly significant, potentially affecting not only their current study but also their future teaching of mathematics and hence the attitudes of their future students. Research at two metropolitan universities found that using readings with an explicit focus on school students' learning difficulties in mathematics provide a powerful additional element in addressing some of this well-documented anxiety felt by many pre-service primary teachers. Reading and reflecting about children's difficulties provided a stimulus for pre-service teachers to reflect more effectively on their beliefs about mathematics learning and teaching. In their reflections, the stages described in the literature on bibliotherapy - identification, catharsis, insight, universalization, and projection - could be identified. This process also gives teacher educators a framework with which to understand the reflective process, providing them with a shared language to talk about pre-service teachers' emotional and cognitive responses in terms of the stages of bibliotherapy. This paper reviews the literature on bibliotherapy, and its use in addressing mathematics anxiety in school students. In particular, bibliotherapy provides a way of addressing meta-affect, that is, how the mind handles affect, understanding people's awareness of and emotions about their emotional states, and as a way of monitoring and regulating emotion. These emotional states can be debilitating, or can enhance "the thrill of the ride" and be productive of learning and accomplishment. This paper describes how bibliotherapy can be a powerful tool for teacher educators to facilitate meta-affective change in pre-service by encouraging them to reflect on their own school experiences and reconstruct their assessment of their capacity to learn and understand mathematics, and hence re-examine their identity as teachers of mathematics.

Key Phrase: Teacher Education and Professional Development of Teachers

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YOU091368    ®

Paper

A Rasch Model approach to measuring school need for psychological services

Adrian Young and Rob Cavanagh, Curtin University of Technology

The role and deployment of school psychologists in Western Australia has been reviewed a number of times since the establishment of services to schools. Current practices whereby school psychologist allocation to schools is achieved continues to appears to rely on school student population figures, its socioeconomic index and an appraisal of the school's"difficulty"level. Psychological services are then allocated accordingly, the decision-making mechanism based on an ad hoc conception of school need.

The research reported in this paper concentrated on the issue of establishing what aspects or characteristics of schools constitutes a greater or lesser level of need for services. Then how to measure this need in an objective and evidence-based manner. The various elements of school need for psychological services are posited to cluster around constructs extrapolated from the domains of service reported in the international professional literature. These are characteristics of students, characteristics of schools and teacher characteristics. The three constructs constitute the preliminary conceptual framework upon which the empirical investigation was grounded.

The study was conducted in three phases: First, theoretical framework refinement utilising data collected from a questionnaire; second instrument development, piloting and trialling; and third, utilising a linear scale to measure need for psychological services in several schools. Data were obtained from samples of principals, teachers and school psychologists working in two Department of Education and Training (DET) school districts. Data analysis employed the Rasch Rating Scale Model to scale data and Analysis of Variance to examine difference in scores accounted for by school characteristics. Data-to-model fit estimations included summary test-of-fit statistics, individual item fit statistics and the Person Separation Index

The results demonstrated that the linear scale instrument developed in the research provided an authentic measure of school need and that the measures of the phase three schools differed significantly from each other.

Key Phrase:   Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation

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YOU091605    ®

Paper

Constructing a western researcher's identity and professional integrity in difference: Restorying the encountered 'exceptional' as an act of locating possible worlds

Kathryn Young, University of Southern Queensland

This autobiographical narrative relates to an ongoing process of 'becoming' a western researcher in non-western contexts. There is an inherent tension between the existing and western introduced paradigm shifts that function to contain ways in which I, as the researcher, could develop faith and trust in myself, in order to insert a more generative and generous local voice into the practice of education.

The paper charts a narrative of my experience as I expose my subsequent feelings of uncertainty and doubt through reflecting on processes I engaged in from the time I began my doctoral research process to my current interest in diverse research contexts in the South Pacific and Asia. It introduces influential colleagues, human relationships, critical incidents and events that were crucial to my 'becoming' a researcher. It also describes those generative and creative times when I was able to voyage in, exoticise the domestic and challenge the essentialised discourse I had taken up and subsequently used to guide my initial reflections on the process and product of my research in those cultural contexts (White, 1992).

Ultimately then, through narrative, this paper is about being and 'becoming' a western educational researcher in contexts where it is necessary to continually locate a space to withdraw and observe, while remaining involved but detached, in order to make visible those conditions that continue to construct subjectivity and guide beliefs and practices.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 40 BAG091486 Navigating the complex journey of"becoming"an academic: Insights from six academics at a regional university.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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YUE091551

Paper

Cultural adaptation of Asian students in Australia

Yun Yue, University of Tasmania

In recent years, due to economic development and globalization, there is a dramatic increase of international students, mainly from Asian countries, coming to Australia and attending various courses, such as language courses, professional training and university degree. Not only do they contribute in substantial financial income, but also bring a diversity of cultures into this country. International students have become an important population group in Australia. While some students do not encounter any major problems in adapting to the new learning environment, others have difficulties in adapting to the educational system and the cultural discourse of teaching, learning, and living. Their psychological well-being is always a research focus for many educators, sociologists and psychologists. The data used for this study were drawn from interviews conducted at an Australian university. Thematic analysis was conducted with the use of Nvivo (qualitative data analysis computer software). The results indicate that emotional well-being is a very important factor in their well-being, particularly stress, fatigue, and loss of identity are the main cause of their problems. The paper suggests some strategies for Australian institutions to use in helping international students to deal with cultural shock.

Key Phrase:   Health and Physical Education

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ZAJ091211

Paper

Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Education: Cross-Cultural Understandings

Joseph Zajda and Rea Zajda, Australian Catholic University

Race, ethnicity and gender in education continue to act as profound barriers to quality education for all, equity and access globally. They continue to represent major dimensions in social stratification and differential access to schooling in both developed and developing nations. Despite some advances that have been made during the last two decades to eliminate discrimination on the grounds of race and ethnicity, discrimination still persists in numerous countries.

This article focuses on the competing discourses surrounding global dimensions of race, ethnicity and gender in education. It is argued that there is a need to re-examine issues of race and ethnicity in the regional and global cultures. There is also a need to focus more on the unresolved tensions between religion, politics, and values education, and the implications for equity, access and democracy. The article concludes that a new understanding and a more effective use of intercultural dialogue could be seen as a means for delivering an authentic and empowering paradigm of peace, tolerance and harmony in the world.

Key words:   Comparative Education

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ZAJ091224

Paper

Globalisation, teachers and the politics of History textbooks

Joseph Zajda, Australian Catholic University

The article examines political socialisation, and nation-building process presented in school history textbooks, as sources for defining a new national identity and citizenship in a global culture. In EU member states there has been a degree of 'Europeanization' of history textbooks, designed to replace outdated nationalism and ethnocentrism, in favour of a European dimension of education policy and a transformative pedagogy that promotes pluralist democracy, multiculturalism, human rights, social justice and inclusive pedagogy. In some countries, school history textbooks play a role in ideological transformation, and the nation-building process, closely monitored by the State. In other countries, including Australia, these processes are still present but in less formal and more ad hoc ways.

Key Phrase:   Comparative Education

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ZAV091521   ®

Paper

The emergent researcher: One woman's journey into the Academy

Agli Zavros, University of Southern Queensland

Race, ethnicity, language, class, and gender are all markers of identity which define individual life pathways and experiences. This paper explores these markers as informing and shaping my lived experiences and subsequently my journey into the Academy. As a Greek-Cypriot, working class, woman I have been engaged with and have participated within the Australian education system as a student, teacher, teacher educator and educational researcher. My lived experiences as an individual from a non English speaking background have informed:"that which I was","that which I am","that which I am not"and"that which I am becoming". Self is socially constructed, reflecting lived experiences and a network of relationships. Drawing on my lived experiences and observations I construct my personal notions of the researcher and of academic efficacy, agency and care. This parallels the co-construction of my PhD research participants' narrative understanding of these concepts.

I engage with storytelling (a narrative way of knowing and being) because it reflects a way of life, a way of being, and a means through which I make sense of the world around me. In the stories that I share, the Academy represents the social, historical and political. It is also a vantage point from which I reflect backwards and construct the narrative of my lived experience. I juxtapose the allegory of the Academy to Plato's allegory of the cave. Both are a comportment of the self with"????????(??the unhidden"(Heidegger 2002 p20). The significance in doing this is to represent a learning journey, from being a young person, to that of the researcher 33 years later. In cases such as this we accept the idiosyncratic nature of story telling and embrace it rather then colonising it and pushing it to the margins. Each of us, including our students and research participants has a story to tell that is an individuated comportment with ????????(??

This paper represents a world view which may sit at the boundaries of other's realities. The significance of this is that in acknowledging narrative accounts of lived experiences, constructed at the boundaries, we are able extend essentialist constructions of such key terms as: efficacy, agency and care.

This paper will be presented as part of Symposium, BAG091486 Navigating the complex journey of"becoming"an academic: Insights from six academics at a regional university.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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ZHA091483

Paper

Research oriented, school engaged teacher education: The logic of practicing workplace-research education

Dacheng Zhao and Michael Singh, University of Western Sydney

Providing the teachers to educate the rising generation for the changing world is a challenge. Further, trying to imagine knowledge formation in nation-bound schooling and teacher education is a challenge. International students generate global flows of knowledge, thereby transforming themselves and others around them. This paper focuses on the deliberate use of the global flows of international students in higher education to boost knowledge rather than accumulate capital, specifically knowledge of Mandarin. This paper provides an account of alternative approach to research-based teacher education, one that centres school engagement as a variation on the standard procedure of advanced teacher education. This paper arises from a study being conducted into enhancing the supervisory pedagogies for improving the educational research capabilities of international students.

The program involves student teachers engaging in a collaborative research-oriented school-engaged teacher education project, involving cooperation from a team of educational researchers from the University of Western Sydney, officers of the NSW Department of Education and teachers and principals from schools in Western Sydney Region. The logic of practice includes three key components: (1) teaching and learning practice in NSW DET including professional learning, lesson preparation and classroom teaching; (2) research practice at the University of Western Sydney including research training, research writing and presentation, research methods and review of research literature; (3) integrating school teaching practice into research practice through sell-reflection. This paper seeks to provide a new perspective on research-based teacher education through incorporating reflective learning into the research process of students undertaking a Masters degree in educational research. This paper report on whether research-oriented, school-engaged teacher education succeeds in the education of reflective and pedagogically thinking professionals.

Key Phrase:   Higher Education

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ZHA091582   ®

Paper

Embedding in-discipline language support for first year students in the sciences

Felicia Zhang and Brett Lidbury, University of Canberra, Jurgen Schulte, University of Technology, Sydney, Adam Bridgeman, University of Sydney, Brian Yates, University of Tasmania and John Rodger, University of Newcastle

This paper reports on a project which aims at addressing the need to cater for the language needs of a diverse student body (both domestic and international student body) by embedding strategic approaches to learning and teaching in first year sciences in tertiary education. These strategies consist of active learning skills which are widely used in language learning. The disciplines covered by the project are Biology, Chemistry and Physics and involves the University of Canberra (UC), University of Sydney (USyd), University of Tasmania (UTAS), University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and University of Newcastle (Newcastle) in Australia. This project is funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC). The paper discusses the background to the study and reports on results on the language difficulties faced by first year science student cohorts from data collected in 2008 as well as qualitative data was also collected on 2008 students' attitudes towards online science learning. It will also report on the results on the implementation of the learning strategies at UTS and UTAS in Physics and Chemistry disciplines in 2009.

Key Phrase:   Science and ICT Education

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