This paper will present the experiences of white female teachers (the author is one of the teachers) who have been and are working in an all Indigenous educational context. It will present scenarios of these white female teachers' attempts to meet the challenge of facilitating Indigenous students' success in an educational context.
With the above focus in mind a brief deconstruction of the Australian literature on teaching Indigenous learners spanning the last twenty years will be offered. What will be exposed from this will be the 'innocent ignorance' of white cultural nuances in western education and the resultant chasm of understandings and interpretations between Indigenous students, their communities and their white teachers.
From the analysis of data extracts - the reflective interview statements of myself and other teachers - a portfolio of 'difference', experienced in a specific Indigenous educational context, will emerge and will begin to shed light on the often asked question:
that white educators' 'discourses of response' to the experience of being in Indigenous educational contexts also works against the facilitation of success for Indigenous learners.The presentation aims to share current ongoing doctoral research, which is working towards an articulation and deconstruction of the nature, elements and dimensions of a strategic essentialism known as 'whiteness' pedagogy.
PAPER 2:
DUR99362
Locating Whiteness in the adult education classroom - paper for refereeing
Jane Durie, University of Western Sydney Macarthur
The focus of this paper is locating whiteness in the adult education classroom. The purpose of my research and practice is to bring attention to the invisibility of whiteness in much anti-racist literature and teaching and, in so doing, expose and unsettle whiteness as the unspoken and invisible 'centre' from which 'the other' is constructed. This is a relatively new focus of research, particularly in Australia, that draws on feminist, post-structuralist and post-colonial literature including the work of Foucault, Spivak, Hall and many others, to expose, unpack and shift the power/knowledge nexus about 'who can speak' and 'who are spoken about'.
The paper will draw on my research in teaching about difference at the University of Western Sydney, Macarthur; and also broader research I am undertaking into white subjectivities in Western Sydney. In researching whiteness it is imperative that the 'white subject' is not seen as a singular entity but rather a complexity of meanings and mutually constituted subject positions, shifting and unstable over time and place. In teaching about difference a particular focus of my research/ practice is to unpack whiteness in terms of the 'race/class/gender triplet'. In the classroom this approach is designed to enable students to think about their own positionings in relation to whiteness, and the contradictory ways in which this can operate in terms of privilege and oppression.
This paper will discuss my work in this area and strategies for exposing whiteness in educational theory and practice.
PAPER 3:
ROB99563
Understanding difference: Doing theory through the process of subject positionings in the early childhood classroom
Kerry Robinson, University of Western Sydney, Macarthur
This paper provides an overview of an approach developed to deal with students' understandings of difference and its implications in both personal and professional contexts, in an undergraduate early childhood education course. This course is unique in that students undertake three compulsory interlinked subjects over three semesters in order to develop a critical awareness and understanding of difference, inequality and social justice. The approach focuses on the use of personal reflection as a framework from which students can begin to critically analyse and theorise the construction of their own values and attitudes towards difference. However, this is taken much further, developing their understandings of the process of 'subjectification' through the construction of knowledge, power and desire, constituted in Foucault's notion of discourse. Through theorising the construction of themselves, students explore the origins, maintenance and perpetuation of power and inequality within a broader social context. Students are introduced to a number of theoretical perspectives including feminist critique, poststructuralism, postcolonialism and feminist poststructuralism. Of particular importance in this approach is problematising accepted norms around issues like whiteness and heterosexuality.
PAPER 4: SHO99564
Sue Shore
DUR99624
The market in higher education
Wendy Bacon, Kath Copley, and Jacquie Widin, University of Technology Sydney, Jane Durie, University of Western Sydney, Macarthur
This paper will draw upon concepts developed by Pierre Bourdieu to critically analysis the current Australian market in higher education. This market, or field, is subject to immense change which is reflected in tensions around the conceptualisation and organisation of academic work. Within the hierarchical structure of higher education, different categories of work have different symbolic capital. The increasing tension around the nature of academic work raises the question: 'What are the processes of production by which some sorts of work are privileged?'
In order to examine the mechanisms of these processes of production, we will look at specific instances of higher education practice, particularly focussing on the areas of journalism and adult education. In doing so, we will critically apply Bourdieu's concepts of cultural and symbolic capital, field and habitus to an analysis of ways in which the tensions around research, teaching and professional practice are enacted both within Faculties and within the broader context of the university.
EDM99535
Paper
On-line subject -"Enter at own risk (teacher bound and gagged)"
Sandra Edmonds, Swinburne University of Technology
Multi-media education requires input from the teacher at the earliest possible stage. That the teacher must carefully consider subject design, content and assessment (in the context of student experience and background) is an explicit pre-requisite essential to beneficial outcomes in educational programmes. Yet this first stage teacher-approach may come too late in the design of on-line subjects.
All too frequently, what has been developed follows a standard form template for on-line subject delivery. Often the "product" may simply reflect an adaption of distance-delivery prototypes. In instructional materials for teachers considerable emphasis is placed on learning design techniques, how to present material in an on-line format. This has the effect of requiring the teacher to adapt teaching method to currently available technology. While there are some creative examples of skillful work by teachers who have done so, that model places process (designed system) before planning (the approach to learning). Consequently the learning outcomes may be debased.
Assessment is a critical element in the prefiguration of teaching methodology. The development of the systems currently available for "self-managed learning" by the student on-line suffer a number of shortcomings. Most conspicuously absent are diagnostic tools for the teacher dealing with large enrolment numbers.
This paper will critically evaluate the assessment limitations of standard on-line delivery models. There are common problems across disciplines and specific examples from law subjects in business degrees will be considered. Methods to improve the teacher's ability to review the teaching/learning process will be outlined. The adoption of models which do not subordinate the teacher's voice to technology is a critical challenge for the future.
EDS99004
Globalisation :The pressures on public education
Jenni Devereaux and Sally Edsall, Australian Education Union
Economic, political and social developments associated with the forces of globalisation have far-reaching implications for the nature and form of public institutions and the provision of social programs and public services, including education. There is a significant body of research on the effects of globalisation and 'free trade' agreements, particularly NAFTA, on public education institutions and educational provision in North America, and the potential implications of the MAI for education. However there is a relative dearth of comparable research and analysis in Australia.
This paper looks at the impact of globalisation on various aspects of public education curriculum, the organisation of schooling and TAFE education, pedagogy and on teachers' industrial situation/s within the public education sector.
We define Globalisation in an eclectic and inclusive manner, not seeking to emphasise any one of its economic, social or political dimensions to the exclusion of any other.
The paper presents a clear delineation between education in the private sector and the public, and argues that privatisation of formerly public systems is one of the manifestations of Globalisation, through redefinition of education as a commodified service. The emphasis on vocational education and training as an adjunct to human capital theory has enormous consequences for curriculum, organisation and industrial relations policies in the public education sector.
The paper concludes with a call for the development of strategic alliances between unions, academics, professional and social justice bodies and the wider community to promote, defend and protect a public education system which is free, secular, of the highest possible quality, available to all, and imbued with the principles of equity of opportunity and outcome.
EDW99006
Paper
Inside the Whale : Deep Insider research
Brian Edwards, La Trobe University
This paper will seek to outline the advantages and pitfalls/concerns/doubts of deep insider qualitative research. I define 'deep insider' research as that undertaken by a person who has been a member of the organisation/ group under research for at least five years.
The study which is the subject of this paper is of a single secondary school's English staff and Key Learning Area Managers implementing the centrally mandated curriculum changes in Victoria known as the Curriculum and Standards Framework. (CSF). I have been a member of the school teaching staff for over twenty years holding various positions on committees, school Council and the like. Until quite recently the staffing was extraordinarily stable with some years seeing at most one or two staff out of fifty moving.
The peculiar benefit of deep insider research is the knowledge the researcher brings concerning history and cultures and an awareness of body language, semiotics and slogan systems operating within the cultural norms of the organisation/group. (Kincheloe, 1991). The organisation and group memberships have been for some time under constant surveillance, review and adjustment. But now that the member is also a researcher a process of self-interpretation is initiated with the change in role in relation to others. (Walker, 1981). Rather than researcher authority I would suggest rapport and trust are of greater significance and the deep insider researcher should not take these for granted given the role change.
The deep insider/researcher is aware of the organisational history and personal relationships which are inter-woven with that history. Much of this may be undiscoverable to outsiders apart from the organisational elements. (Ball, 1997). The deep insider has been and is still a part of that unfolding history and the research being undertaken may indeed have a significant impact on that ongoing story and relationships .
Researching the lives of others carries with it onerous ethical implications. Quite apart from matters of disclosure and anonymity there is also the need to justify such intrusions, willingly though they may be granted by participants. The work of Emmanuel Levinas (1985) will be explored for his help in setting a duty of care for such research.
The whole point of insider research is the 'privileged' nature of the insider's knowledge. It rests upon long-term relationships often extending well beyond the boundaries of work-place affiliations. Given such a context accusations of betrayal of confidences or managerial attempts to edit reporting of unattractive organisational features are experiences central to insider research. (Humphrey, 1995). It might also be noted that reporting unpalatable information about individuals or organisations may carry with it its own dangers for the insider researcher's career within the organisation. Whistle -blowers generally have an unhappy history.
EDW99007
Paper
Cut and paste, duck and weave, smoke and mirrors : Teacher responses to mandated change.
Brian Edwards, La Trobe University
This paper reports the preliminary findings of a case study of the teachers in one school grappling with curriculum changes mandated by the Education Department of Victoria. The Department claimed the changes were necessary as they provided teachers from the Preparatory year through to Year 10 for the first time in Victoria's history with a clear statement of student learning outcomes in each subject area. The change is known as the Curriculum and Standards Framework (hereafter CSF).
The case study school is a large, multi-campus Government Secondary College of mixed socio-economic and ethnicity intake. The focus will be on the efforts of the teachers and Key Learning Area Managers as they seek to make sense of the changes wrought by the CSF. It will explore their initial reactions to the changes, plot the development and changes of their reactions and attempt to place their work within the context of the broader research into policy implementation in schools and changes to teachers' work. This is reflected in the growing use of contract and short-term replacement teachers in the Victorian education system.
Associated with such views of the nature of work are views as to the nature of change and the responses of individuals to change. A plethora of texts have explored the elements, processes, dangers and promises of change. Chaos theory now informs management theory and the new entrepreneurial, corporatised organisation/school is advised to operate in an environment of constant change encouraging both flexibility and adaptability in its members.
But the corporate ideology is not without its own hidden dangers whereby as Willmott (1993:536) tellingly argues , 'Instead of producing committed, enthusiastic, self-disciplining subjects, a possible effect of corporate culturist programmes is a reinforcement of instrumentality amongst employees who comply with the demands without internalizing their values'.
The paper will explore the teachers' responses and using Ball's suggested broad categories for typifying school responses (Ball, 1992:137) it will outline a number of other responses teachers make to mandated change and place them within the context of implementation theory (Carter & O'Neill, 1995). What will be shown is that the teachers' roles in implementation is vastly more complex than a one-way highway wherein teachers are obedient technicists who '. . . jump through the hoops'. (Interview, 1997). As Giddens memorably observed 'The docile bodies which Foucault says discipline produces turn out to be not so docile after all. . . but knowledgeable agents who resist, blunt or actively alter the conditions of life which others seek to thrust upon them'. (Giddens, 1985 :172)
EDW99133
Paper
Students-as-researchers
Jan Edwards & Robert Hattam, Flinders Institute for the Study of Teaching
Students-as-researchers was one strand within the Students Completing Schooling Project which is a three year collaborative project between the Flinders Institute for the Study of Teaching, the Senior Secondary Assessment Board of South Australia and the Department of Education, Training and Employment. The research team developed curriculum materials for teachers to teach a students-as-researchers approach to students. Students-as-researchers in schools investigated the issue of early school leaving in their own school communities which contributed to understandings developed by the research team generated through 209 interviews of early school leavers in the qualitative strand of the research.
The students-as-researchers strand of the research has resulted in the development of a curriculum product for teachers to teach the skills of research to students and a web site where the insights generated by students-as-researchers are published.
EDW99674
Paper
Fastfoodtown - voices of student workers
Jan Edwards, Flinders University
The Students Completing Schooling Project interviewed 209 young people about their lives in and out of school. Most young people engaged in part-time work while still at school were highly critical of the employment practices of some employers in the Fastfoodtown industry. Many spoke of encouragement by employers for them to leave school on the promise of more hours. Young people also provided valuable insights into the complexity of part-time work and full time school.
EJA99621
ELE99157
Paper
Observed patterns in the surveys undertaken during the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP)
Liz Eley, University of Otago
A distinctive feature of NEMP is the attempt to report information about student attitudes and motivation, as well as skills and knowledge. In most of the curriculum areas covered, students completed surveys relating to their experiences, attitudes, perceptions, and voluntary engagement in the curriculum area.
This presentation reports on patterns observed across the two year levels and across the twelve curriculum areas surveyed. Quite consistent differences were found between the two year levels. Student gender and ethnicity were factors that related quite strongly to student attitudes in some of the curriculum areas.
This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 1 CRO99008 National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP): Findings from the first cycle.
ELL99400
EPS99633
Boys and girls come out to play: Constructions of gender in school playgrounds
Debbie Epstein, Mary Kehily, Mairtin Mac an Ghaill, & Peter Redman, University of London
This paper is based on the ethnographic study of children's play at breaktime in two contrasting primary schools in north London. In the first school boys' football dominated the use of the playground, particularly during the long playtime which took place during the lunch break. In this playground, football was a key signifier of masculinity and non-players were, literally, confined to the margins of the playground. However, in the other school football was confined to a particular area ('the cage') and children (boys and girls) in the four different year groups were allowed to play each day, with a girls-only day once a week. This seemed to completely alter the dynamics of gender in the playground. A significant number of boys in the second playground invested their energies in producing themselves as masculine through wrestling games. There were, nevertheless, significant numbers of boys and girls playing together in this playground, sometimes involving themselves in the kind of imaginative games more usually association with the play of primary age girls. The paper will argue that children will use the means available to them to construct gender in their playgrounds and that this will frequently involve the reproduction of hegemonic cultural identities and relations of power. However, the paper will go on to argue that local interventions at the level of the individual school can and do bring into question such identities and power relations, in the process making available to children ways of being that are more open to possibility and difference.
ESS99671
`Success' and/or `happiness'? Social class as an element in adolescent girls' perspectives on their futures
Kathy Esson, University of Sydney
This paper focuses on adolescent girls' education and career choices, and their attitudes to womanhood and the future. In particular, the paper explores social class factors in girls' gender identity and gender subjectivity (Nielsen and Rudberg, 1994), using a template of phenomenological and discursive subject positions developed for reading girls' narratives. The template's three loosely overarching positions - normalised femininity, normalised individualism and embodied responsiveness - are introduced, and used to interpret similarities and differences among girls. It is argued that there is no simple relationship between class background and girls' perspectives on themselves and their futures.
This work is based on a three year study of adolescent girls in two schools - a private, non-selective girls' school and a `disadvantaged' girls' high school. The study involved semi-structured one-to-one interviews which explored girls' relationships, decision making, narratives of self (including self-description and self expression) and views about growing up and the future. Small groups of girls were followed, the youngest initially in grade six and the oldest in grade eleven, yielding both cross-sectional and longitudinal material.
EVA99481
Paper
"Which comes first, technological skill or innovative teaching styles?"
Barbara Evans & Judy Rex Swinburne University of Technology
In recent years there has been an increased trend at universities towards a more interactive and innovative style of teaching, using multi modal and different teaching approaches. Kolb and others have established that students have a preference for learning activities that reflect the learning style in which they are most comfortable. However, it cannot be assumed that they have the technological capabilities needed to fully benefit from these changes in style.
The findings from a survey of second and third year students showed that there was a relationship between students' self assessment of their communications and technological skills and their preferred learning styles. Students with a higher self-assessment of their knowledge and skill level with respect to computers, e-mail and the Internet felt more comfortable in a more innovative teaching environment. Many of the students reported that their skill level was very low, and therefore some may not be gaining the full benefit of the content of course. However, unless teachers revert to past methods, there will need to be a steep learning curve in terms of computer and technological skills.
The results also indicated that there is a difference between second and third year students. More students in second year preferred the traditional lecturing style, while their third year counterparts preferred a more innovative style.
EVA99621
Paper
Interactive television in primary schools: children's experiences of learning with SOFNet
Terry Evans, Elizabeth Stacey and Karen Tregenza, Deakin University
This paper stems from the first year of a two-year research project funded by the Australian Research Council. Our research is investigating the ways in which primary and secondary school teachers use the Victorian satellite broadcast interactive television system called SOFNet (Schools of the Future Network) to enhance the educational experiences of their students. In particular, we are interested in the ways in which the teachers build interaction or dialogue into their classes around the broadcast programs. This paper describes the children's experiences of learning with SOFNet during the first year of the research which focused on primary schools. The findings are based on observations of the children using ITV in their classes, typically for learning Languages Other Than English (LOTE), or for science and technology. The research also involved interviews with the children after they had used ITV for a year. The paper takes the form of a discussion of issues which emerge for children in their use of ITV based on the first stage of data analysis.
EVA99723
The power of phonemic awareness for all students
David Evans, University of Western Sydney Macarthur and Criss Moore, NSW Dept of Education and Training
The importance of phonemic awareness in learning to read has been reported in research literature (e.g., Ehri & Soffer, 1999; O'Connor, Jenkins & Slocum, 1995; O'Connor & Jenkins, 1999). It is also highlighted in reports responding to the perceived difficulties students are experiencing in acquiring minimal standards in literacy (e.g., Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, 1998). Phonemic awareness is a reading skill that can be taught (O'Connor & Jenkins, 1999). It is a skill that can be taught to all students on entering Kindergarten, providing the basis for all students to acquire minimal reading skills. This paper reports the results of study in which three instructional programs were compared. The three instructional programs included teaching students:
- letter-sounds only;
- letters-sounds and blending of sounds;
- . letter-sounds, blending and phonemic awareness skills.
These programs were taught three times per week for 25 minutes, over six weeks. Each program was embedded in a language based context, where students were required to demonstrate conventions of print and engaged actively in oral language activities. The results showed the power of teaching phonemic awareness across a range of measures. While all students in each instructional program progressed, the students in the program involving phonemic awareness tasks achieved statistically significant gains on word reading, passage reading, and reading of pseudo-words.
Implications of the results are discussed in terms of preventing reading difficulties. These discussions will focus on:
- the importance of explicit and systematic instruction
- the design of the classroom literacy program; and
- the importance of a meaning-based literacy program.
FAR99235
Paper
The things that matter : Understanding the factors that affect the participation and retention of indigenous students in health sciences programs at the University of Sydney.
Sally Farrington,Susan Page & Kristie DiGregorio,Yooroang Garang Faculty of Health Sciences
This research is directed at answering the question about what factors really influence the progression, retention and success of Indigenous students in Higher Education. This is a new question in this field as most previous research is qualitative and directed at generating statistics about retention and progression rather than exploring the students' real experiences ( both past and present) and the ways in which these experiences influence retention and success.
FAR99235
FAR99645
SYMPOSIUM 41: Work, learning and change Lesley Farrell, Terri Seddon, Mike
Brown, Lawrie Angus, Simon Marginson and Andy Spaull, Monash University
The focus of this symposium is on the complex, interrelated technological and social changes that are currently shaping work and learning in Australia. These changes have effect at every level, generating new work practices and new forms of learning in local/global workplaces, defining institutional responses to the organisation of education and training, challenging established pedagogies and redrawing boundaries between school and work. Lesley Farrell discusses the organisation of work and change in restructuring workplaces, focussing on the demands that economic globalisation exerts on the social (and textual) practice of work and the impact of workplace education interventions. Terri Seddon considers the ways that these changes shape the organisation of learning work in educational institutions. Mike Brown describes the limits of innovative best practice in the context of these changes, developing a more appropriate work-related curriculum framework. Lawrie Angus describes opportunities opened up to rural and remote students as the boundaries between school and work are redrawn. Simon Marginson draws these threads together, identifying trends and arguing that the key elements in the role of Vocational Education and Training will be its capacity to integrate more closely with the workplace, integrate into the innovation cycle and speed technological diffusion.
FAR99645
FAR99779
PAPER 1:
FAR99830
Paper
'Working' knowledge and 'Working' identities: learning and teaching the new word order of the new work order
Lesley Farrell, Monash University
This paper is concerned with the role that enterprise based teachers play in attempting to induct workers on the periphery of the global economy into the discourses of the global marketplace. It focusses on the micro-politics of language, arguing that economic globalisation is a social achievement that generates, and requires, new language and literacy practices. Workplace language and literacy practice changes to accommodate the demands of global networks of accountability (for instance, various Quality documentation mechanisms) and associated management structures like cross functional teams and these changes have a significant impact on work practice, work identities and constructions of working knowledge. Enterprise based language and literacy teachers can be implicated in the social and political processes by which new working identities and new working knowledges are constructed. The paper draws on an intensive eight month study of a restructuring textile manufacturing company as the company attempts simultaneously to achieve a QS 9000 rating, to establish a cascading set of cross functional teams and to implement an Action Learning Team training program.
PAPER 2:
SED99831
Paper
Continuity and change in education workplaces
Terri Seddon, Monash University
This presentation will report on findings from an interview-based case study of the impact of neo-liberal reform in an Institute of TAFE in Victoria. Data were collected in 1995-6 with a view to finding out how teachers and managers at the case study site experienced national training reform. The development of the training market based upon contestable funding appeared to have a major impact on the TAFE because it drove a commercialisation of Institute work. A number of analyses of these data have now been undertaken, highlighting the changes in management work, teachers views of competency-based training, innovative organisational responses to commercialisation including international education and the development of teaching more attuned to clients, and processes of identity formation in TAFE and its staff. The paper will flag some of the main findings in these different analyses and offer a more general assessment which highlights the contradictory patterns of continuity and change that neo-liberal reform has engendered in TAFE.
PAPER 3:
ANG99832
Rural students, workplace learning and building communities
Lawrence Angus, Monash University
This paper reports a project conducted by the author on behalf of Victorian Industry Education Partnerships (VIEP) and funded by the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs. The study was designed as both a research and development project in order to examine the part-time paid and unpaid work undertaken by rural and remote students. The study demonstrates that the paid and unpaid work of young people needs to be recognised, valued and utilised as an important resource, not only for the learning outcomes of the student workers, but also for sustaining the social fabric of rural communities.
PAPER 4:
BRO99833
Struggling over work-related learning
Mike Brown, Monash University
This paper sets out to make problematic some examples of innovative best practice within enterprise based VET programs. An argument is presented for the de-differentiation of VET and the construction of an alternative field of work-related learning. The aim is to foreground consideration and broader representation of community interests. Frameworks for the development of curriculum and pedagogical practice are suggested. A major feature of these frameworks are that that attempt o decontextualise work-related learning from the dominant influence of neoclassical economics. This is in contrast to an approach that considers people in the community as buyers, sellers or externalities. Instead, decisions and decision making processes regarding political economy and what these mean for community members are made central. Initially, the curriculum for work-related learning is contextualised by participatory economics derived from the work of Albert & Hahnel. Though even this is broadened out further to consider curriculum in regard to their 'activists model for analysing and changing society'.
PAPER 5:
MAR99834
The future of work and the implications for VET
Simon Marginson, Monash University
The future of work will be shaped by technology, the capacity of labour, and change management. The key elements in the role of VET will be its capacity to integrate more closely with the workplace, integrate into the innovation cycle, and speed technological diffusion. This suggests that VET and its practitioners will need to become more global, better networked and closer to the technological edge. Government funding will continue to be necessary, for in Australia, innovation is heavily dependent on small firms that lack adequate capital. The role of government-supported VET is also crucial in the provision of compensatory and egalitarian opportunities in an increasingly polarised setting. One of the major challenges is to extend policy and provision to non-standard workers. The paper will discuss these issues, drawing on the outcomes of a recently completed NCVER supported study of changes in work organisation and the implications for VET.
FAR99779
Paper
Research and the production of "worthwhile" knowledge about quality in early years education
Sarah Farquhar, Massey University
There has been substantial study of the quality of early childhood education, yet only recently have researchers started to ask questions and take approaches that have relevance and meaning within the early childhood field. This paper reviews how research has shaped our perception of what quality means in early childhood education. The predominant and the new approaches to looking at quality will be identified and critically examined in relation to practical, philosophical, and policy issues. The way in which quality early childhood education is viewed by different groups will also be discussed and related to the directions in which research is currently proceedings.
FAU99446
"Do I Beat 'Em or Join 'Em?" Individual and Collective Adaptations Leading to School Success Among Minority Group Students in Australia.
Geoff Munns (University of Western Sydney Mark McFadden (Charles Sturt University) Lee Simpson (Charles Sturt University Karen Faulkner (University of Western Sydney
OVERVIEW:
The symposium will consider school success among two very different minority groups in Australia. To do this it will draw on two research projects in progress. The first is looking at factors affecting retention and success among groups of Aboriginal Australian school students who are remaining at school in the post-compulsory years. The second is considering the polarisation of Vietnamese Australian secondary school students around associated points of school achievement and behaviour. On the face of it these groups seem to share very little in their relationships with education, schooling and Australian society, except they are both the most frequent targets of racist behaviour (Viviani, 1996). The symposium then takes up questions surrounding the nature and experiences of schooling for Australia's original inhabitants and owners in comparison to those of one of its most significant recent immigrant groups. These questions will be considered within frameworks developed by Ogbu (1992, 1999) which differentiate between adaptations to school, education and society among "involuntary minority" and "voluntary minority" groups.
PLAN:
The Symposium will operate on three levels. The first will establish a framework of beliefs, interpretations and adaptations to education among minority groups by utilising Ogbu's research. The second will draw on and illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of the framework through a discussion of respective research into Aboriginal Australian and Vietnamese Australian secondary school students. The third will encourage participants to discuss and test the framework in light of both the presentations and their own research and experiences with education and minority groups. It is at this point in the symposium that, through understanding the responses to schooling of some Aboriginal and Vietnamese minority students, there may be a consideration of what works, fails and needs to be changed in the education of different minority groups in Australia. It is envisaged that the Symposium will allow for contribution and interaction within all three levels. As a result of the Symposium, a summary statement will be made available to all participants.
FEH99643
Paper
Research ethics in the electronic age
Heather Fehring, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Kevin Kee, Department of Education Victoria
From the age old perspective of research ethics investigations involving humans is a problematic area of inquiry. Issues such as: confidentiality, participants' privacy, informed consent, minimisation of harm, the involvement of minors, covert methodology, and data security are still of paramount concern. As the push for electronic communication breaks new ground so to does the ethical responsibility of researchers to maintain integrity in the research process. This panel discussion will combine a number of voices who have an interest in maintaining the balance between the 'need to know' and the protection of the participants in educational research. Participants are invited to contribute to the new debate regarding ethical issues arising from the digital transference of information by way of the internet.
FER99091
Paper
Supporting cross-cultural adaptation during practice teaching in China: Reflections on sevens of year experience.
Brian Ferry and Deslea Konza (University of Wollongong)
This paper reports on a seven-year study that investigated strategies employed to facilitate the development of cross-cultural adaptation by 154 preservice teachers before, during and after their 3 week practicum experiences in China. These strategies are related to a 4 stage model of individual adaptation to a new culture (Brick, 1991).The findings showed that over the years we became more successful in facilitating the adaptation process especially during the critical 2nd stage of this process. Our data also showed that almost all preservice teachers progressed through to the 3rd stage of a 4-stage process of adaptation. Their progress through these stages was facilitated by the creation and maintenance of a viable 'practicum community'. The success of this community depended on all members helping to maintain it.
FER99092
Paper
Assisting learners to interpret graphs and tables with computer-based cognitive tools.
Brian Ferry, Barry Harper, John Hedberg, University of Wollongong
When learners interpret graphs and tables they must be able to read the labels, relate the labels and data to a specific context, described in the accompanying text, and then translate the meaning associated with the display of the data into words. Often learners experience difficulties in interpreting graphs because of the many modes of representation presented as, apart from a graph, verbal descriptions, tables and formulae are often used to represent the same relationship, and this, can confuse the issue by creating cognitive load. In particular, poorly organised data causes learners to divide their attention among the various pieces of data creating cognitive load that in turn leads to inefficient processing of information.
The purpose of this study was to investigate how cognitive tools (developed with HyperCard software) could be used to support learners to process information displayed by graphs and tables. The study had five goals.
- To identify the cognitive strategies that learners employed when they interpreted graphs and tables.
- To use the information gathered about the cognitive strategies that the learners employed to inform the design of a prototype of a set of cognitive tools that would assist them to interpret graphs and tables.
- To trial the protoype of the cognitive tools with a group of learners and describe how they used them.
- To use the information gathered about learner use of the prototype to inform improvements in the design of the cognitive tools.
- To describe how learners used the improved version of the cognitive tools.
The findings describe how the simple, context-specific cognitive tools developed helped to reduce learner cognitive load associated with the interpretation of graphs and tables.
FET99592
Paper
Draw a Computer User
Tony Fetherston, Edith Cowan University
Traditionally students' attitudes towards learning and towards various subjects have been assessed using questionnaires and/or interviews. Students' attitudes towards computers have relied on these approaches and they have supplied much valuable information. However such approaches are not ideal and may have validity problems, related to honesty and self knowledge of the respondent, response sets and an inability to interpret questions meaningfully. In response to these concerns the author developed a new approach - Draw a Computer User. Such information was necessary to guide the implementation of computers into the class's curriculum. As such the results will prove interesting to educators and researchers undergoing this increasingly common process. The approach builds on the widely used Draw-a-Scientist (DAST) devised by Chambers (1983). It attempts to identify the stereotypical features of typical computer users. This paper describes the methodology developed and presents results obtained from a Western Australian Year Six class. These results indicate that the test does indeed identify stereotypical features, which are presented, but interestingly is also able to identify gender differences in images produced by these students. Reasons for these differences were probed in interviews and are presented. Analysis of the images produced by these students showed that generally students in this sample did not identify themselves as typical computer users but still held positive attitudes towards typical computer users.
FIE99266
Paper
School discipline:Is there a crisis in our schools?
Barry Fields,University of Southern Queensland
Along with literacy and numeracy achievement levels, school discipline ranks as one of the major concerns voiced by the public about schools and the school system. These concerns are echoed in frequent and often dramatic media reports of disruptive students, bullying, and violence in classrooms and playgrounds across the country. There is a continuing, and some would say growing perception that behaviour problems are endemic in schools, that teachers are struggling to maintain order, and that school authorities are unable to guarantee the safety of students or teachers.
This paper examines research on discipline problems and violence in schools in Britain, the United States, and Australia. This analysis reveals that schools are not in crisis, and violence is quite rare. The role of the media in fostering a distorted view of discipline in schools and contributing to hastily conceived and often inappropriate responses and misdirected resource allocation is the focus of critical review.
FIN99548
Paper
Information technology and Australian teachers - Implications and issues: Real time: Computers, change and schooling - National sample study of the information technology skills of Australian school students
Glenn Finger and Neil Russell, Griffith University Glenn Russell, Monash University
There have been unprecedented demands for changes in the preparation of teachers in the use of information technology (IT) in the classroom. This paper reports relevant findings from Real Time: Computers, change and schooling - National Sample study of the Information Technology Skills of Australian School Students (DEETYA, 1999) in which a representative sample of 400 schools from all Australian states and territories were surveyed to establish baseline information about both students' and teachers' experience and skills in information technology. The survey provided information from 6213 students, 1258 teachers and 222 principals. Although teachers surveyed reported that technology was very important for their students, for their own professional development, and that it was important to integrate technology in the curriculum, there were significant issues identified associated with the pre-service preparation and ongoing professional development of teachers. Teachers identified barriers to using technology in the classroom, reported low levels of confidence about their ability to keep themselves informed of information technology developments, low levels of support for IT professional development, and the majority of teachers indicated that they require more and higher quality IT professional development. While some of these barriers, such as access to computers and the Internet, poor levels of technical support and availability of multi media software might have been predicted, the teacher comments on the inadequacy of pre-service and professional development provision of computer education courses was not expected and raise serious issues which need addressing. By reviewing and interpreting the findings of the survey, suggestions are made for future directions for the preservice teacher education programs and professional development in IT for teachers.
FIS99567
The legitimation of education as an academic field in Canadian universities, 1960-1990
Donald Fisher, University of British Columbia
The paper is divided into four parts. First is an historical overview of the emergence of Education as an academic field beginning in the 1950s with the creation of academic units and professional associations and ending in the 1990s with the dramatic increase in research funding. The other three parts of the paper document three overlapping themes: professionalization and legitimation; differentiation and fragmentation; and, theoretical and methodological change. The intent is to trace how the external and internal boundaries of Education have changed through time by focussing on the debates around the distinctions between science and non-science, disciplinarity and multidiscplinarity, and, purity and application. The paper draws on a diverse range of data sets including a national survey, documentary sources and interviews.
FIT99010
Mathematics in Vocational and Workplace Education: The challenge for educational research
Gail FitzSimons, Monash University and Swinburne University of Technology
There are ongoing calls to develop a workforce that is flexible, literate and internationally competitive, whether in symbolic-analytic, service, or production industries. The information society, as well as the industrial society to some extent, is based on a global knowledge economy, pursuing organisational and product innovation and thereby placing a premium on human capital development. Such a knowledge economy demands a new form of literacy encapsulated in, but going beyond, the Mayer Key Competencies. In addition to the competency Using Mathematical Ideas and Techniques, all of the other competencies are embedded in the discipline of mathematics. Research has shown that in the workplace more is required than the simplistic choosing and using of school-type (usually arithmetical) algorithms: decisions are made by workers at all levels, particularly in the case of contestation or non-routine problem solving. These could involve the decoding and critical evaluation of information presented numerically, graphically, or diagrammatically; switching between part-whole relationships; abstracting complexity to reveal underlying structures; or the invention or invocation of multiple methods of problem solving. In other words, higher order thinking and metacognitive skills can be required. Yet in Australia there has been little recognition of these aspects of mathematics in previously accredited curricula, and even less likelihood under the National Training Framework. Findings from research into the actual uses of mathematics in workplaces should critically inform initial training and lifelong learning, while bearing in mind the need for inter-disciplinarity (or Mode 2 thinking). This is a challenge for mathematical and educational research in vocational and workplace education.
FIT99136
Paper
Using three cohorts of journalism students across the full range of one academic program at one university, this paper details the responses gained after asking the most basic of all questions; Why did you choose a career in journalism?
Phil Fitzsimmons & Wendy Bilbo, University of Wollongong
After surveying the students in all three years of the program, 90 students then volunteered to take part in a series of interviews which aimed to delineate the forces which determined their career choice, their understanding of the writing process gained from their school experience and their perceptions of what constitutes effective writing. The data gathered clearly indicated that students had embarked on a career based almost solely on their engagement with a particular teacher rather than an a demonstrated writing ability. Their understanding of their chosen field was also dependent on a subset of highly subjective ideals which bore little correlation to the everyday working life of a journalist.
The findings of this project have implications for the teaching of secondary English, curriculum development, the role of career supervisors and the links between secondary and tertiary institutions.
FLA99139
Paper
Understanding student writing in a globalised university - an activity system approach.
Rick Flavell, Monash University.
This paper reports on research undertaken into student writing in a post-graduate coursework program. The diversity of students in the study were broadly representative of the population of our globalised universities. Twelve students from a variety of English and non-English speaking backgrounds, both local and overseas were the case studies for this research which followed the students through the lecture series, the writing and assessment of the essays. This paper focuses on the essay written by one overseas student and traces some the tensions that the essay creates for the student and also for the lecturer and university.
The complex set of influences which accompany the essay writing event provides a challenge to find an appropriate framework for analysis. This paper attempts to expand and elaborate theories of social context by applying a development of Russian activity theory to the essay writing context. This allows the various social, psychological, cultural and historical influences to be considered as part of the one interconnected system. The paper explores the various contradictions, tensions and conflicts which occur within and between the activity systems related to the
The results have implications both for the way writing is viewed and for the development of activity theory.
FLE99046
The effect of teaching on phonological unit size in reading
Claire M. Fletcher-Flinn & Alison Arrow
The size of the phonological unit used by children learning to read is a topic of current interest. Two studies (Coltheart & Leahy, 1992; Duncan, Seymour, & Hill, 1997) employing different methodologies have reported that children use small phoneme sized units. It is possible that the 'mixed' instruction that these children received influenced the results, since mixed instruction always includes the teaching of letter-sound correspondences, and often 'blending' procedures. The aim of this study was to examine phonological unit size in children who received 'book experience' instruction in reading, which does not include teaching of letter-sound correspondences. The results will be discussed with reference to major theories of reading acquisition.
FLE99047
Do Poor Readers Have a Deficit in Phonological Awareness?
Claire M. Fletcher-Flinn & Rhonda Johnston
Much research has shown that poor readers perform poorly on tasks measuring phonological awareness. However, there is less agreement on whether poor readers suffer the same phonological awareness deficit when they are matched and compared with reading age controls. The aim of this research was to use the statistical technique of meta-analysis to combine the results of many studies and test for overall significance and effect size. The results will be discussed with regard to major theories of reading acquisition.
FLI99277
The use of vignettes in interviews - helping to develop substantive theory.
Nerilee Flint,University of South Australia
Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss) proposes that theories emerge as data is collected, analysed and integrated to saturation. Essential to this is the collection of data that is rich and full of material that can be analysed. This paper, which builds on research in progress, examines and explores the use of vignettes in interviews as a way of obtaining rich descriptions from participants. The research is investigating tertiary students' perceptions of the fairness of educational assessment and QSR NUD*IST is being used as a tool for data analysis.
FLO99155
Overall task results from the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP)
Lester Flockton, University of Otago
The first complete cycle of NEMP assessments has been completed,with the final three reports released in July 1999. The twelve reports for this first cycle cover students achievement at year 4 and year 8 in science, art, reading, speaking, technology, music, mathematics, social studies, writing, listening, viewing, health, physical education, and two aspects of information skills.
This presentation synthesises the results for these 15 areas, identifying patterns of performance for the two year levels and analysing the performance of population subgroups. Factors examined include student gender and ethnicity, school and community size, school type, geographic region, school socio-economic rating, and school ethnic composition. Some of these factors are shown to be highly influential, while others do not seem to relate substantially to the performance of students.
This paper will be presented as part of Symposium 1 CRO99008 National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP): Findings from the first cycle.
FOR99012
Paper
Learning mathematics through conversation and utilizing technology
Patricia Forster and Peter Taylor, Curtin University of Technology
This paper discusses how students' participation in conversation and classroom activities potentially evidences and constitutes their cognition. Participation is viewed in terms of reflective discourse, a construct from the literature, and is described in the context of two Year 11 students together designing a simple aplet for their graphics calculators, then discussing its operation. Reflective discourse is characterised by shifts in conversation so that concepts which are discussed initially as resulting from mathematical operations (calculations) become referred to, in turn, as objects that are operated on to solve problems or for developing other concepts. The aplet was for calculating the magnitude of vectors given in component form. Interaction with each other, which centred on the technology, was seen to be instrumental to the students moving from understanding magnitude in its component definition, to later using magnitude to solve vector problems in an insightful way. Using reflective discourse as a framework for analysis suggested it is a valuable theoretical viewpoint for describing how learning might occur.
FOR99029
Paper
Who can('t) do maths - boys/girls? An international comparison
Helen Forgasz (Monash University) ,Gilah Leder (La Trobe University, Berinderjeet Kaur (National Institute of Education, Singapore)
There has been a long held perception that the field of mathematics is more appropriate for males than for females. The construct, mathematics as a male domain, has been considered a critical variable in explanations for females' under-representation in the most demanding mathematics subjects offered at school and higher education, and in related careers. The widely used Fennema-Sherman Mathematics attitude scales [MAS]are comprised of nine subscales including Mathematics as a male domain [MD]. It has recently been argued that the content of some of the MD items are anachronistic and that responses to others can no longer be reliably interpreted. A new scale, loosely based on the MD, has been developed and trialed in Australia and Singapore with students in grades 7 to 10. The data from the two countries were compared. In this paper, we present general findings which indicate changes in perceptions about some aspects of the gendering of mathematics and also discuss the similarities and differences in the perceptions of students in the two countries. The overall findings contribute an important dimension to the debate in contemporary society on concerns about the educational disadvantage of boys. The implications of the findings in the context of the pursuit of equity in mathematics education are discussed
FOR99405
Paper
Homework - A bridge too far?
Kathie Forster,University of Technology Sydney
There is ample evidence that parental involvement in their children's education enhances the educational experience and achievement of the children. Teachers are therefore being urged to strengthen the links between the school and the home. Homework is one such link. Parents want it and there is evidence that it serves as an important ongoing source of information for them about the curriculum and the philosophy of the school as well as about their child's progress in specific areas of learning. Yet teachers quite often only provide homework because they feel under pressure, particularly from parents, to do so. The homework that is set may not provide an accurate picture of what or how the students are learning. Moreover, homework can be a source of stress in many families.It can also serve to reinforce educational and social inequalities and underline cultural differences. Is homework a bridge too far? This paper will report on some current research on homework, especially on the differing attitudes of parents and teachers towards it and will discuss ways in which the differing demands and expectations of homework may bereconciled.6. No additional presentation technology will be required
FOR99456
Symposium: 22 Pushing assessment boundaries: Addressing values through assessment
Joy McQueen ,Juliette Mendelovits,Lynne Darkin,Wendy Bodey ,Michele Lonsdale & Margaret Forster ACER,Camberwell
Overview of symposium:
The symposium provides an opportunity for participants to discuss, with professional test developers, the challenges of addressing values through assessment. Four test development contexts are presented:
- assessing students' ability to evaluate texts against their own knowledge of the world (OECD international study of literacy multiple choice and short answer tasks);
Identifying the values underlying students' decision making (Western Australia's Monitoring Standards in Education Program short answer tasks);assessing students' ability to identify and articulate values (Curriculum Corporation's Discovering Democracy materials long responses tasks) andassessing students' social values (John XXIII College questionnaires) Organisation planThe symposium will be organised around the challenges of addressing values through assessment. A brief introduction will describe general challenges in this work and ask the audience to bear these in mind as they listen to the presentations.
Each presenter will speak for approximately 12 minutes describing and illustrating their work, and raising particular challenges for exploration. Thirty minutes will be set aside for open discussion.
MCQ99457
Assessing students' ability to evaluate texts against their own knowledge of the world.
Joy McQueen & Juliette Mendelovits
The OECD/PISA survey of 15-year-olds' reading literacy will be administered next year to about 100,000 students in more than 30 countries. The framework for the test design defines reading literacy as 'understanding, using and reflecting on written texts', the word 'reflecting' incorporating the idea that readers bring their own experiences and beliefs to bear on what they read. Test development for PISA has effected this idea, and acknowledged the role of values in reading literacy, by including questions which demand that students draw on personal values and understandings in responding to texts. Although this may not seem especially revolutionary in the Australian educational context, it will certainly extend some of the participating countries' notions about the scope of reading, and also about the capacity of standardised tests to address such areas of experience. The discussion will focus on the challenges of developing items which are technically useful, which genuinely ask for value judgements and which at the same time are able to accommodate enormous social, cultural, personal and pedagogical diversity.
DAR99458
Identifying the values underlying students' decision making
Lynne Darkin
In 1997 ACER accepted the challenge to develop assessment tasks to identify the values underlying students' decision making. The work was completed for the Western Australian Monitoring Standards in Education program which has pushed the boundaries of assessment in a number of learning areas, including developing performance tasks in Science and computer administered tasks in the Arts. This paper introduces for discussion a number of fundamental challenges in identifying and assessing students' values. Is it possible to design assessment contexts which expose what students really think rather than what they know we want them to say? Can we identify students' underlying values by asking them to reflect on the actions of others rather than confronting them directly about their own actions and values? What inferences can we draw from students' responses to decision making tasks?
BOD99459
Assessing students' ability to identify and articulate values associated with civics and citizenship
Wendy Bodey & Michele Lonsdale
For students to participate fully in civic decision making processes they need knowledge and skills to help them make informed choices. They also need an appreciation of the values and attitudes that are integral to effective participation in civic life. This paper looks at the challenges involved in developing instruments to assess students' ability to identify and articulate values associated with civics and citizenship. Can we assess students' ability to recognise values in Australian society and the role they play in decision making without testing 'correct' values? Can we develop contexts which will allow students from Year 3 to Year 10 to demonstrate their understandings and justify their own views in relation to civic-related issues? How do we capture both limited and sophisticated understandings. And can students articulate values in relation to both past and present events?
FOR99460
Assessing students' social values
Margaret Forster
Outcomes frameworks are being used in many education contexts to clarify and communicate expectations of student achievement, and to monitor student achievement over time. Most of these frameworks describe expectations of developing knowledge, skills and understandings. ACER has been working with staff at John XXIII College in Perth to develop frameworks for conceptualising, assessing and monitoring students' development along personal and social dimensions such as compassion, emotional growth, social development, and service of others. The development of instruments to measure these personal and social dimensions is particularly challenging. For example, how do we conceptualise compassion? What is the best form of instrument for measuring compassion? How should that instrument be administered? Should this kind of work be undertaken? This paper discusses the rationale for the work, examines some of the challenges of conceptualisation, and presents some examples of the frameworks and the instruments for discussion.
FOR88826
FOS99438
Paper
In search of the public: Girls' status as learner-citizens, global issues and local effects
This paper examines the newly emerging relationship between two contemporary international trends in education. The first trend is that in most western countries, girls are now achieving statistically slightly better average school-leaving results than boys, in an apparent move towards sexual equality. This in turn is occasioning a hostile populist 'backlash' against this success. "Male underachievement" has been dubbed the predominant gender discourse of the mid 1990s. On the other hand, a recent international collection (Mackinnon, Elgqvist-Saltzman and Prentice 1998) argues that education in the twenty-first century will be "dangerous terrain" for women. The second trend is the revival of interest in participatory democratic theory which is reflected in the strong current focus on civics and citizenship education in education systems. The paper analyses the origins of the present international climate,discussing factors such as the role of the media, the role of academic response to the issues and the rhetorical forces at play, such as the notion of "presumptive equality". It is argued that in the present climate it is very difficult for girls to be equal with boys as learner-citizens. Girls remain adjuncts to the learner-citizen as male, a problem which is not addressed in current models of citizenship education. The two trends under discussion are thus contradictory, positioning girls in a dialectic of desire and threat in their quests for citizenship. Australia will be discussed as a case study with some comparative material from Holland and Scandinavia. The paper reports research to be published by Routledge in an international collection "Gender and Citizenship Education:International feminist perspectives" edited by Madeleine Arnot and Jo-Anne Dillabough.
FOS99591
Paper
What do young Aboriginal students make of American software for phonological awareness skills? A reflective analysis of the interaction between the student, the software designer, and the observer.
Linda Foskey, University of New England
Three Aboriginal students in Kindergarten in Australia were observed using an American software package 'DaisyQuest' in individual sessions in their classroom over one school term. 'DaisyQuest' was designed to train phonological awareness skills in young readers. Each student had a different approach to the software depending upon his phonological awareness skills and experience with computers. Before working on 'DaisyQuest' one student could read flluently and had well-developed phonological awareness skills. The second student had some concepts of print, letter-sound correspondences, and knowledge of rhyming words. The third student had similar pre-reading skills to the second student, but also had a history of chronic otitis media. Each student's individual attributes affected the tutor's level of involvement in teaching phonological awareness and computer skills to the student whilst they interacted with 'DaisyQuest'. A challenge to the researcher was how to utilise the hours of videotaped data. Transcription of all words and actions for all sessions would have taken many months of painstaking work. The researcher decided instead to audiotape her own reflective-analytic comments about the interaction whilst viewing the videotapes. Trends in the interactions were then able identified for each student. Therefore, only snippets that illustrated particular concepts had to be transcribed and described in detail. Results indicate that the tutor had more influence on the student's interaction with the software than she anticipated. Implications for the classroom will be discussed.
FOX99230
Who defines "quality" for the new millennium? Critical reflections on the role of Australian universities in delivering post-graduate courses for specific cohorts of international students
Christine Fox,University of Wollongong
Over the last three years, Wollongong University's Faculty of Education has been working through a World Bank project to assist with improving the quality of teacher education in Sri Lanka. Cohorts of Masters and doctoral students from Sri Lankan Colleges of Education, Universities and the National Institute of Education have engaged in specially designed Educational Leadership programs at the Wollongong campus, some with mainstream students, some separately. The apparent success of these programs has been measured by requests from the Sri Lankan Ministry of Education to run an increased number and variety of courses over the next two years.
This paper looks at some of the assumptions and dilemmas underlying such projects. The notion of "quality"- who defines the quality of these courses, and who assesses the quality of outcomes- will be explored. In this case, how can we determine whether such international courses provide the impetus for the Sri Lankan graduates to effect change locally in their teacher education programs? The authors argue that the postcolonial discourses invoked through these, and similar projects in other universities overseas, need to be more critically examined from the perspective of the "other". This paper includes an analysis of data collected from interviews with students during their study and on their return to Sri Lanka. The authors, all lecturers in the program, and with many years of cross-cultural teaching experience, reflect on lessons learned through this particular case study.
FRA99181
Paper
"They keep asking questions and want to know more": Enhancing students' learning through curriculum integration.
Deborah Fraser,University of Waikato
As a pedagogy Curriculum Integration (CI) has global and local significance as the central focus in teaching this way is to assist young people with both personal concerns and social issues. These issues and concerns form the basis of a negotiated curriculum of direct relevance to the socio-cultural world of young people in diverse settings. The challenge for research in CI is to investigate the learning process as it unfolds in all its complexity and the role of the teacher in both scaffolding and promoting students' intellectual, social and emotional growth.
WHY99182
Paper
" I eat, breathe and sleep curriculum integration" : Enhancing teachers'learning through curriculum integration.
Barbara Whyte,University of Waikato
(This paper is presented in association with the paper on Curriculum Integration offered by Dr. Deborah Fraser: "They keep asking questions and want to know more: Enhancing students' learning through curriculum integration".)
It has been suggested that CurricuIum Integration (CI) offers "the challenging curriculum, the higher standards, and the world class education that is so often talked about, but rarely experienced" (Beane & Brodhagen, 1996). A group of experienced NZ teachers motivated to rise to such 'global heights' in their classrooms, have found that implementing CI as a pedagogical approach can demand a significant shift in both philosophy and practice (Whyte & Strang, 1998). Critically reflecting on and examining developing practice, through a combination of discussion and debate with peers and facilitators, making links with theory by reading current literature, and collegial observation/feedback interaction, has been effective in helping teachers understand and implement CI in two local clusters of schools. It is suggested that the process of democracy that is enhanced in a CI environment for students, can also be an integral part of the change process for teachers. .
FRA99282
FRE99630
FRY99573
The relationship between self-perceptions, achievement, dysfunctional behaviour, and patterns of coping
Erica Frydenberg, University of Melbourne and Ramon Lewis, La Trobe University
Interest in the area of stress and coping by researchers and others has led to an explosion of relevant publications in recent with more than 16,000 references to coping in the psychology and education literature in the last decade. Nevertheless the field is fraught with theoretical imprecision which then reflects on the outcomes generated. It is readily acknowledged that research in the field needs to pay more attention to the ecological context and the issue of culture (Hobfoll, Schwarzer & Chom, 1996). Determining the validity of the ways in which coping is measured is a necessary first step. By reviewing a number of research publications, this paper examines the construct validity of a newly published Australian scale called the Coping Scale for Adults (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1997) as well as determining the relationship between coping and a number of key variables.
One way construct validity is empirically assessed is by examining the extent to which scores on a test are empirically associated with theoretically related constructs. For example, it may be hypothesised that adults who are exhibiting more symptoms of pathology (for example, depression) will use more non-productive coping strategies and fewer productive ones. Consequently this paper reports investigations which examine relationships between self-perceptions, achievement, dysfunctional behaviour, and patterns of coping. In general the analysis indicates that independent studies report very similar findings, namely non-productive strategies and styles are associated with negative outcomes, for example, low self esteem is related to feeling overwhelmed and to a lesser extent the productive strategies are associated with more positive outcomes.
FUN99531
Paper
L1-Assisted Reciprocal Teaching for ESOL students to improve their comprehension of English expository text
Irene Fung, Ian Wilkinson, and Dennis Moore, University of Auckland
This study investigated the effects of an L1-assisted reciprocal teaching procedure on ESOL students' comprehension of English expository text. The viability of the procedure was tested in a pilot study using a within-subject ABCD design, and confirmed in a follow-up study using a multiple-baseline design across three schools. In the follow-up study, after a 5-day baseline assessment, 12 Year-7 and Year-8 Taiwanese ESOL students were given 15 to 20 days of L1-assisted reciprocal teaching. This intervention comprised both L1 reciprocal teaching while reading Chinese (Mandarin) text and L2 reciprocal teaching while reading English text. The Mandarin and English dialogues took place on alternate days. On each day, before the reciprocal teaching dialogue, there was a 15-minute session of teacher-directed explicit strategy instruction where students were informed of why a strategy was useful, and how and where to apply it. Results showed that students made gains on both standardised and experimenter-developed tests of reading comprehension. These gains maintained 3 to 4 weeks after the intervention as indicated by results from three follow-up probes. Moreover, students were able to transfer their comprehension fostering and monitoring strategies to novel tasks as indicated by their abilities to recall, and detect logical inconsistencies in, expository text. Treatment effects were also revealed in results from a strategy interview and think-aloud task. The success of this study suggests that students with limited English proficiency can improve their English comprehension through reading strategy instruction that capitalises on students' L1 language proficiency and literacy skills.
GAL99121
Paper
Critical policy methodology: Making connections between the stories we tell about policy and the data we use to tell them
Trevor Gale, Central Queensland University
In recent times critical approaches to educational policy studies have been subject to increasing interrogation over methodological issues, often by critical policy researchers themselves. In the main, their reflexive posturings have been informed by critique which proceeds that beyond brief descriptions of research logistics and a general commitment to the methodologies of a critical orientation, critical policy analyses offer few explicit accounts of the connections between the stories they tell about policy and the data used to tell them. As a way of addressing these silences, this paper proposes three methodological approaches within which to explore and explain matters of policy, each generating its own particular view of the (policy) issues worth looking for, where they can be found and how to look for them. Drawing on research into the production of Australian higher education policy during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the paper illustrates the characteristics of these approaches, referring to them as policy historiography, policy genealogy and policy archaeology.Without claiming absolute distinctions between their interests, the paper couples policy historiography with the substantive issues of policy at particular hegemonic moments, policy genealogy with social actors' engagement with policy, and policy archaeology with conditions that regulate policy formations. In this order they represent questions with interests in the 'what', 'how' and 'why' of policy. The critical orientation of the paper ensures that attention is also drawn to the ways in which 'legitimate' answers to these questions tend to reflect the interests of dominant social groups.
GAM99760
GAR99194
Paper
There's many a slip 'tween cup and lip.: A case study of educational policy implementation in a changing context.
Christine Gardner and John Williamson, University of Tasmania
Education and schooling increasingly are subject to direct political involvement by Ministers and system level authorities. The perceived political benefits suggest a continuation, or even an increase, in this trend. The data presented in this paper come from a Tasmanian study of policy making, implementation and evaluation. Data were collected from teachers, principals , school and departmental documents, and from the researcher's participation in the professional development workshops. The development of the policy, its announcement, and its implementation were found to vary particularly where political and educational agenda conflicted . Teachers' needs and professionalism should be respected by the policy process. Individuals' readiness, confidence, skills and credibility effect implementation outcomes. In providing supportive leadership, policy makers need to be increasingly aware of sharing their visions with all stakeholders. Ultimately, teachers and students in classrooms will determine the success or otherwise of policy implementation. Dependence on teachers for successful and lasting change must be recognised and valued. This paper first, will demonstrate the limited nature of much recent theorising about and practical implementation of the policy process and second, outline ways of enhancing the likelihood of successful implementation.
GAR99199
Paper
"Feminist dilemmas in how young women move"
Robyne Garrett ,University of South Australia
Feminist dilemmas in fieldwork challenge our work and integrity. They often revolve around power and tend to display contradictory and irreconcilable positions for the researcher. This paper discusses the experiences of a feminist researcher working with senior secondary girls in local metropolitan schools. The main aim of the fieldwork was to investigate the social construction of gender within the context of sport and physical activity. Specifically, the research intended to explore how the experiences and attitudes developed toward the body and physical activity through the Schooling years impact on any commitment to lifelong physical activity. Feminist researchers attempt to articulate their commitments and political priorities. They are moved by a commitment to women. For this reason fieldwork dilemmas can directly challenge the underlying tenets of their beliefs. Analysed here are the power relationships between the researcher and the participants as well as issues of empowerment for the participants in the light of feminist research goals. Whilst it is recognised that fieldwork is still useful and important, reconciling the contradictions between theory and practice can be a major challenge.
GAY99776
Paper
What guides the teacher educators? The influence of standards movements on teaching
Maureen Ryan and Jan Gay, Victoria University of Technology
For a decade federal and state government have been working in an effort to reform teaching and especially to reform teacher education. Initially the standard for entry into the profession was increased by the requirement that teacher education courses provide all students with a university standard general education. The National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Leaning (1996) developed a set of competency standards that defined the knowledge, attributes and skills underpinning teachers' learning and professional practice. Paralleling this movement bodies such as the Board of Teacher Registration (Queensland) and the Standards Council for the Teaching Profession (Victoria) released specific guidelines for teaching standards. Recently the Standards Council (1998) provided guidelines for the content, scope and outcomes for the accreditation of pre-service teaching courses.
The aim of these reforms is to strengthen the teaching profession and to raise its standards, that is to enhance the quality of student learning by redesigning teacher qualifications and accountability requirements for university courses.
In this study we address three questions: (1) What representations of teaching are portrayed in the professional teaching standards? (2) How are standards based reforms influencing teacher education courses? and (3) What are the beliefs about teaching that teacher educators hold in the context of these reforms?
These questions cut across two areas of research that are used as a framework for our investigation. First, representations of teaching are informed by research into teaching, learning and teacher education. Zeichner (1993) identified a paradigm of teacher education practices so we use the defining principles to guide our analysis of the current standards based reform and the teacher educators' practices. Second the literature on standards based reform, its policies and practices and the assumptions about teaching that underpin these practices are analyzed.
This investigation draws on two sources of data. First, the national and Victorian teaching standards documents are analyzed to answer the first question. To answer the second and third questions we conduct semi-structured interviews with teacher educators from three universities within Victoria. The interviews focus on three areas: (1) An example of teaching practice; (2) Principles of teaching that guide these practices; and (3) The influence of standards based reform on their course. The interviews are audiotaped, transcribed and analyzed for themes that describe the principles of teaching. These findings are considered within the broader context of the worldwide standards movement and the paradigm of teacher education identified by Zeichner (1993).
GEC99696
GEL99696
An analysis of cultural, motivational and learning preferences reported by ATSI respondents to the first year experience questionnaire.
Bruno Gelonesi, Gary Lee, Neryla Jolly and Peter Kench, University of Sydney
The Faculty of Health Sciences is the third largest Faculty of the University of Sydney and has 21 undergraduate programs. The Faculty is located on a remote campus of the University at Lidcombe NSW. In 1997 the Faculty commenced a program of examining the first experiences of the first year cohort. Each year a modified form of the First Year Experience Questionnaire (McInnis 1996) is administered to all first year students. The aims of this program are to obtain baseline data on student background, attitudes towards study at university and social perceptions that students have in their first year of university education. This research is now in its third year and cross sectional data over this period has produced a number of interesting observations.
This paper explores the question of motivation and learning preferences reported by students who completed the First Year Experience Questionnaire. The ATSI responses are compared with the responses from the rest of the first year student group.
The quality of learning and student retention are issues that have recently been in sharp focus. Writers such as McInnis (1996) have argued that the nature of the relationship between universities and their students is now in the melting pot. In particular the 'sink or swim' approach to university undergraduate teaching is clearly challenged.
The findings are that ATSI students are generally very keen to succeed at university. They are more likely to know what they expect to gain from studying and had clear expectations about the value of being enrolled in a university course. The findings also indicated that ATSI students were significantly less confident of their ability to succeed and were more likely to indicate that they would be more reliant on guidance from the lecturing staff.
GIB99163
Paper
Believing, thinking and feeling: Putting theTeacher back into effectiveness
Catherine Lang ,University of Waikato
Reform in education has impacted on teachers' beliefs, thinking, and emotions. Policies directed at extracting performance gains have fuelled a view that teachers ought to change, and are expected to change. Teacher effectiveness has become confused with accountability; teacher excellence with measures of student outcomes; and performance with curriculum and assessment compliance. Inevitably, the imposition of more stringent external controls on teachers' work has suffocated much of the desire and heart of teachers to teach. Yet, effective teachers demonstrate insightful understandings about themselves as teachers, a self-efficaciousness that motivates them to persist even against the odds, a capacity and willingness to think reflectively and critically in the search to know and understand, and a passion for making a difference in the lives of those with whom they work. This paper discusses the impact of change on teachers' work, and the significance of teachers' passion, beliefs, and thinking in explaining teacher effectiveness.
GIB99432
SYMPOSIUM 19 Desire and Mediation
Donna Gibbs, David Saltmarsh and Patricia Gustafson, Macquarie University
Overview of symposium.
This symposium aims to explore issues which arise in postgraduate teaching and learning when online technology is employed. The symposium will take the form of a dialogue between presenters and will particularly focus on degrees of mediation in the conceptualisation of teaching and the facilitation of learning.
GIB99813
Leading, guiding or hiding?
Donna Gibbs, Macquarie University
The online unit under consideration is a postgraduate Education unit but the teaching and learning principles which are explored have been chosen for their relevance to teaching online in any field. The particular focus of the paper is how student/student and student/facilitator interaction is affected by the role taken by the facilitator as well as by the design of the material as a whole. This paper forms part of a dialogue with another facilitator of a postgraduate online unit and a postgraduate student who observed or 'lurked' with permisssion during the delivery of both units.
SAL99814
Paper
Engaging and disengaging.
David Saltmarsh, Macquarie University
While accepting the opportunity to run an existing postgraduate unit online without much consideration, the task provided challenges at almost every turn. This paper outlines some of the issues involved in reconstructing an existing unit and the need to reconceptualise the entire project. Early on a choice needed made as to whether there would be any face-to-face component to the teaching, this included the teaching how to use the various bits of the technology. The decision was made, possibly more out of belligerence than good sense, to run the unit entirely online. The consequences of this decision will be presented and discussed with Donna (the project leader) and Patricia (a non-participant observer of the unit).
GUS99815
Observing and not participating
Patricia Gustafson, Macquarie University
In an online unit where the bulletin board entries form the sole "classroom" discussion arena, the non-participating observer "observes" by reading the written entries. With permission from the participants, this is a non-intrusive form of observation and a valuable (albeit limited) form of data for research. This paper presents an analysis of the entries 'posted to the online units. Discussion of these entries with the unit facilitator, may encourage reflection on the intended (and sometimes unintended) roles played by the facilitator, and the effects those roles may have on the student/student, and student/facilitator interactions.
GIL99160
Gil99389
GIL99506
Paper
Does exceptional achievement require exceptional schools: a challenge for the future
Shirley Gillett, Otago University
What significance does education have in exceptional achievement? This question is examined by analysing the text constructed through interviewing a number of New Zealand born women and girls who have achieved exceptionally highly in some area. Though few of them identified their schooling specifically as significant in later achievements, themes emerging from the overall narratives suggest the relevance of education. These themes include early reading, precocious ability, positive gender self-beliefs, the provision of competition and levels, experiences of success, and life changing relationships with teachers, mentors and coaches as well as contrasting themes such as experiences of boredom, disappointment, and difference.
What does this data mean for present and future education? In relation to this I explore issues such as early identification, hot housing, private schooling and elite programmes, linking it to theories of education such as those of Plato and Dewey in order to challenge schools in their approach to pursuing excellence in the next century.
From the insights provided from the interviews I suggest tentatively a move towards an education provided by the state which makes time for teachers to focus on the individual. In the presentation of material the methodology will be exposed to critical examination by the audience. Video clips and excerpts of taped interviews will be part of the presentation.
GIL99578
Paper
Still the half open door! Women and research degrees in education
Judith Gill, University of South Australia
The Faculty of Education UNISA was identified as failing to maintain equity in student enrolments because the high proportion of women in undergraduate awards was reversed when the research degree enrolment was considered. As a response the Faculty commissioned a study to investigate the experience, motivation and incentives for women students to enroll in research degrees. The study involved existing students and potential students from the three education sectors - schools, adult education and university. The research included an investigation of the views and practices of senior personnel from the employment institutions, viz. DETE, ISB and the CEO, in terms of the career paths offered for employees who have research degrees.
This paper reports on the results of the research and offers some suggestions for the further development of research degrees within Faculties of Education.
GIL99579
Paper
Global citizens/local agents: re-positioning the school at the centre of sociocultural transformation
Judith Gill and Sue Howard, University of South Australia
Starting from an analysis of the internal contradictions inherent in the civics education curriculum, this paper attempts to deconstruct the citizen as schooled product and proposes an alternate concept of citizen. In many respects the 'new' citizen must have the capacity to transcend the constructed limits of politics and geography as understood in terms of national boundaries in order to take up a position of world player, actor and respondent. At the same time the question of local affiliation and connectedness is important. The paper uses discussions with primary school children to inform the proposals for the need to reconceptualise the citizen. By taking up subject positions in which the children are always and already knowing and belonging, the young informants demonstrate their readiness and willingness to engage in debate about local and global issues. Ultimately the paper argues that by forging global connections and opening up broader spaces schooling can begin to transcend the limitations of contexts of disadvantage and remoteness at the same time as preparing children for new forms of political engagement.
GIL99665
Paper
The competency standards for workplace assessment and training: A needs assessment study
Shelley Gillis, Patrick Griffin, Ralph Catts and Ian Falk, University of Melbourne
The changes that have altered the government training policies in Australia in the past decade have been numerous and substantial. While many reports have been influential in the framing of current thinking, implementation can arguably be said to have begun with the formation of the former National Training Board and the introduction of National Competency Standards in 1991. The assumption that underpins this approach is that 'industry' is the best agency to determine training needs. Since 1991 there has been a steep learning curve for all concerned; many employers and some training providers, need additional opportunities to become familiar with the purpose and content of the standards. This study undertook a needs assessment of workplace trainer and assessment programs and standards. The paper reports on findings from a national study that investigated how industry, government bodies and training providers were using and interpreting the two sets of standards for Assessment and Workplace Trainer. The end result of the study was a revision, expansion and combination of the workplace trainer and assessment standards. It informed the development of specialist units that lead to a diploma in training and assessment systems. This research underpins the nationally endorsed Training Package for Assessment and Workplace Training.
GIL99804
GIN99260
Paper
An authentic learning environment in a design and technology subject for preservice primary teacher education students
Ian Ginns, Campbell J. McRobbie, and Sarah J. Stein,Queensland University of Technology
A major emphasis in design and technology curriculum programs for primary school is the engagement of children in hands-on construction of technological artefacts. The children are expected to use design processes in an environment that may resemble, in various ways, the environment that designers and engineers work in. The concept of authentic learning environments may be used to describe such practices and contexts. This paper describes an investigation, using an interpretive research methodology, into preservice primary teachers' views of the learning environment established during their participation in a design and technology subject that included, as key components, an introductory, structured sequence of learning experiences followed by work on an open-ended technology project. Students enrolled in a one-year postgraduate teacher education program were the informants in the study. Insights in students' views about the learning environment were obtained using survey instruments, interviews, field notes and a Repertory Grid. Additional insights were obtained by videotaping and audiotaping the activities and discourse respectively of focus groups during practical sessions. For selected cases, the paper examines the reasons underpinning major changes in their views of the learning environment. An analysis of the influence of the design and technology subject and learning environment on students' thinking about teaching technology in the classroom is also presented in the paper. Implications of the findings for the preparation of preservice teachers in the key learning area of technology are discussed.
GIN99816
Are questions as important as answers?
Jenny Ginsberg, Methodist Ladies College
As a thinker and learner, a lifelong fascination with questions led me to the topic for the learning project I undertook last year. I asked my students from my two Year 7 classes to conduct an oral history interview with someone they knew well.
In Oral History the focus is on ordinary men and women going about their daily livews. The life stories which unfold are unique and at the same time universal. These stories provide a reflection of history through the personal experiences of the people interviewed.
I read extensively in the literature of Oral History, being influenced by the writings of Patton, Douglas and Lowenstein among others in my approach. In my methodology many stories were used to engage student interest, I role played many interviews, practised the mechanics of trouble free taping, modelled effective interviewing techniques and discussed the many types of possible questions.
Data collection was established through the writing of individual journals, lengthy written responses, the taped interviews and an evaluation by independent observers. They taped interviews with 12 randomly selected students. Students found that questions need preparation, need patience, require intent listening, are very important, satisfying and powerful, some are more fruitful than others, and there are many types of questions.
Through the oral history interview, students gained a sense of the historical context which shaped the life of their interviewee. Other intended and achieved outcomes were a deeper understanding and appreciation of history and an awareness of being part of an historical discourse, nongender specific and inclusive of ordinary people, as well as research and interviewing skills.
This paper will be presented as part of Symposium JOH99135 Mapping learning communities at Methodist Ladies College.
GLA99410
Multiple sites, multiple goals, and multiple outcomes:Teachers and children constructing development in writing
Kathryn Glasswell,Queensland University of Technology, Judy Parr & Stuart McNaughton, University of Auckland
The study reported in this paper examines the teaching and learning of writing in New Zealand Primary School classrooms. A two phase,cross-sectional study, it provides a description and explanation of the means by which expertise and ideas in writing are co-constructed by teachers and learners. Using data drawn from a questionnaire survey and a classroom observation phase, the study examines the role of participants' ideas and goals in the construction process and the complex ways in which they relate to the organisational and interactional patterns of classroom writing environments. It is argued that teachers' ideas about writing are best viewed as multi-faceted constructs operational on a number of levels An examination of teachers' organisational practices revealed that the activities of modelling, conferencing, sharing and independent writing provided multiple sites for the development of children's deas and expertise. The activities taking place in these multiple sites were often governed by multiple goals, which allowed for both implicit and explicit teaching to take place. It will be argued that the complex relation between teachers' ideas and their organisational practices results in a elaborate array of information that learner writers must be able to integrate and reconstruct in ways that will further their development. Children's ability and success in accessing the information available in multiple sites is held to account for differential outcomes in writing.
GLA99570
Teachers' work, curriculum knowledge and the production of 'worthwhile knowledge'
Trish Glasby, University of Queensland and David Kirk, Loughborough University
In Queensland, the development of a syllabus for the senior secondary school takes six years to pass through trial and pilot phases before becoming available for general implementation throughout the State. Teachers are central to this curriculum development process. This paper draws on data from a three year study of the pilot phase of the development of the Board of Senior Secondary School Studies (BSSSS) Senior Health Education Syllabus. The focus of the paper is how teachers came to make sense of the Syllabus, and the knowledge that is deemed 'worthwhile', on the basis of their interactions with BSSSS curriculum developers. It is also concerned with how teachers' work within this form of curriculum development was circumscribed and contained by the development process. The paper reports that the 'instructional discourse' (Bernstein, 1996) of the Syllabus was transformed during the interactions between curriculum developers and the teachers piloting the Syllabus. Curriculum developers' interactions in a series of workshops with teachers were aimed at assisting them to write work programs, design assessment instruments, and produce submissions of student work. These interactions served to limit the range of interpretations of worthwhile knowledge in Health Education. The asymmetrical power relations that existed between the curriculum developers and the teachers served to privilege the knowledge and interpretations of the former over the latter. In ensuring that teachers met the mandated aspects of accreditation and review, the curriculum development process limited the possibility of balance between a framework imposed by the BSSSS and the development of flexible and creative interpretations of the Syllabus on the part of teachers.
GLE99692
Fran Gleeson and Lisa Gye, Swinburne University of Technology
Our third year Media/Literature majors class of Electronic Writing offers students the experience of a new kind of writing: one which examines ways of thinking about the links between writing, technology and memory. Theories of Electronic Writing and hypertext are inevitably linked to a new pedagogy, a practice which draws on the current revival of old or classical rhetoric with its emphasis on invention and memory as well as literary theories and cognitive psychology. Although not the exclusive domain of online hypertext, the new rhetoric finds an experimental stomping ground in hypertext/hypermedia authoring. When students are given the skills of authoring along with a wider range of rhetorical devices, the emphasis of learning shifts to the invention process; to the neglected spaces in between the lines of traditional academic thinking. In the words of Greg Ulmer, this represents an approach to knowledge 'from the side of not knowing what it is to the side of one who is learning, not from one who already knows.' This paper provides an examination of students' online experiments as a means of exemplifying the new learning technologies in action.
GOR99679
The perpetuation of a semi-profession: Challenges in the governance of teacher education
Jennifer Gore and Kellie Morrison, University of Newcastle
Our major aim, in this paper, is to analyse the Adey Report on National Standards and Guidelines for Initial Teacher Education for its potential contribution to teacher education reform. Two major analytical tasks were undertaken. First, we examined narratives constructed within the Adey Report to identify the logic of its arguments and the context in which it places itself. Second, we examined the ways in which key groups implicated in the text, particularly graduates, were "constructed." In so doing, we explored the document's articulated aim of "preparing a profession" and identified challenges faced in accomplishing that goal.
"Professionalisation" as the proposed reform strategy poses substantial challenges to, and places considerable hope in, teacher education. We cast some doubts on the possibility of such professionalisation, pointing both to internal aspects of the document and to external constraints. Particular tensions we identify include: embracing the complexity of teaching and teacher education without overwhelming those engaged in the enterprise; acknowledging local needs and academic autonomy while attempting to ensure national standards and accreditation; the idealised articulation of graduate "super teachers" who will enter teaching contexts quite different from those assumed in the articulated standards and guidelines; the construction of a middle class habitus for teachers alongside aims to diversify the teaching profession, and; the status of the Adey Report itself and its potential to affect the necessary government policy changes and resources for teacher education. Without widespread attention to such issues, by all relevant parties, we argue that the Adey Report is more likely to contribute unwittingly to perpetuating teaching as a semi-profession rather than contribute to its own goal of preparing a profession.
GOD99166
GOU99166
SYMPOSIUM: 7 Location and difference: Women's and Other perspectives for re-thinking environmental education
Annette Gough, Noel Gough, Hilary Whitehouse, Michael Singh
Overview of symposium:
The four speakers will address this theme from different perspectives:
- re-thinking environmental education through feminist and postcolonial deconstructions of Northern science (Annette Gough)
- how poststructuralist feminism can be applied to EE research to create new and different understandings, with particular examples from North Queensland (Hilary Whitehouse)
- cyborg identities as a form of otherness with the internet/cyberspace as a 'space' in which environmental knowledge is produced (Noel Gough)
- the globalisation of environmental risk and the need to engage (differently) with the other (Michael Singh) The focus of the symposium is a concern with possibilities for re-imagining conceptual frameworks for (teaching, learning and researching within) environmental education.
Organisation of the symposium:
Each of the speakers will present their papers followed by an open discussion of the issues being raised.
PAPER 1:
GOU99167
(De)constructing a different environmental education
Annette Gough,Deakin University
This paper addresses issues of location and difference that arise from (re)constructing environmental education through feminist and postcolonial deconstructions of Northern science. I argue that environmental education, as it has been practiced over the past three decades, has generally taken the form of a very traditional educational enterprise, dominated by white male scientists of Amero-Eurocentric origins. The exceptions to this approach have been few, and have generally come from a critical perspective. The continuing political concerns about the state of the environment remain unmatched in educational concerns in most formal education structures. Drawing on feminist and postcolonial critical theorising about Northern science I argue that in order to construct an environmental education which will make a difference we need to adopt a different approach, one that recognises that the present epistemology of environmental education is flawed in its lack of recognition of location and difference. In discussing these flaws and reconstructing a different environmental education I refer to the new curriculum documents for VCE Environmental Science and Outdoor Environmental Education which are to be implemented in Victoria in 2001.
PAPER 2: WHI99168
Reconceptualising the frames for environmental education research
Hilary Whitehouse,James Cook University
When poststructuralist feminist theorising is applied to an analysis of the conceptual frames of environmental education, what emerges are different terrains of knowledge. The ground shifts away from the universalising discourses of nature production toward an emphasis on lived bodily experiences of place with all their inherent contradictions and exhilarations. There are implications for re-conceptualising environmental education research and these include: the need to think and speak differently on our makings of "environmental" understandings; the need to more intensively trouble the binaries through which we frame the Others and our gendered selves; and the necessity for paying closer attention to spaces and places where we imaginatively make ourselves through discursive land-shaping, and cyber-shaping, practices.
Implications for environmental education research practice will be spoken about with particular reference to tropical Australia where the research was conducted.
PAPER 3:
GOU99169
Terminal (dis)locations: environmental education as a cybertextual practice
Noel Gough,Deakin University
This paper addresses issues of location and difference that arise from (re)conceptualising environmental education as a poststructuralist cybertextual practice. I argue that poststructuralist theorising and electronic textual practices impel us to 'rethink the subject' in/of environmental education in at least two ways. First, cyborg subjectivities (and the marks thereof) can be understood as forms of difference among teachers, learners and other stakeholders in environmental education.Secondly, the increasingly globalised network of converging electronic communications constitutes a 'space' for the production of environmental knowledge that complicates taken-for-granted assumptions in the discourses of environmental education concerning the extent to which local (and sometimes 'indigenous') knowledges should be privileged and the ways in which locally-produced and 'universal' knowledges can and should be deployed. These issues will be explored by reference to exemplary topics and themes in relevant school and university subjects, such as ecosystem modelling, climate change, biotechnology, and ecotourism.
PAPER 4:
SIN99170
The globalisation of environmental education and the politics of engagement with the racialised other
Michael Singh, RMIT University
The argument advanced in this paper is that, in these times of uncertainty and risk, the internationalisation of ideas - specifically the globalisation of environmental education, must also engage critically with local deployments of environmental politics against those designated as racially different. This argument is structured around four major points.My starting point is a description of the transnational network and collaborative action research developed by the Learning for a Sustainable Environment (LSE) Innovation in Teacher Education Project. I briefly escribe the three stages of the project-in-action, giving a general indication of what happened, when and with whom. The section which follows explores the achievements made possible by the action research network.While this section is concerned with the reasons underlying the Project's achievements, it also marks the beginning of efforts to transform routinised perceptions of the LSE Project. The third section of this paper foregrounds dilemmas confronting efforts such as this to spread ideas about environmental education globally, while local environmental politics is directed against the very presence of these people in this country. In this way the papers provides an account of selected dilemmas raised through the important work of the LSE Project by locating it within broader socio-political questions. Based on the foregoing account the final section, which is future-oriented, considers possibilities for reconceptualising the local/global interconnections of environmental education and politics.
GOU99688
GRA99501
Restor(y)ing the public in education
Audrey Grant, La Trobe University and Margaret Palmer, Northern Territory University
This paper argues that if educators are to reclaim and recover the 'public space' in education, currently a largely 'vacated space', we will need dual access - both to sound analyses (of global issues and local effects) and to a transformative vision for restor(y)ing education. First, the 'new times' restructuring of education and life, through corporatisation and marketisation, is marked by an extraordinary silencing of alternative values and preferred stories and by vacating of the public space. Micro to macro, local to global examples of this can be considered, along with contested concepts of the 'public'. The point of taking seriously sound analyses of the restructuring of Australian schools, tertiary and higher education sectors along quasi-market lines (Marginson 1997) is not to apportion blame, pass the buck or encourage despair, but to identify what a transformative vision for restor(y)ing education might address. Much critical analysis stops at this point. Second, this paper goes on to consider several approaches and strategies for 'renewing hope', reclaiming the public space, and co-creating the future, all as part of a sustaining vision for restor(y)ing education, and public lives in the third millenium.
GOR99676 GOR99676
GRE99229
Papered conversations: Journalling our way through the transition into university
Pam Green and Gloria Latham,RMIT University
The move into the university context presents a range of challenges and opportunities for students as they deconstruct cultural myths and perceived expectations. Critical dialogical journalling provides a means via which colleagues can critically reflect upon the nature of transition, from the student viewpoint but also in terms of themselves. This paper will report the interim findings from a six year study of transition to university with a focus on the wisdom gained from our collegial writings: our papered conversations. The study, now in its fourth year, reveals the highs and lows of the journey into university from the student point of view. The paper will adapt Brookfield's (1995) metaphor of multidimensional, interconnecting lenses as a means to consider the research findings as they arise from our papered conversations well as the journals passed back and forth between students and researchers. The framework of lenses offers a means via which to use autobiographical reflection, to see ourselves through the eyes of our students, to gain wisdom from colleagues, and to engage further with relevant literature. The use of dialogical journals between colleagues will be discussed in terms of opportunity for co-researchers to work towards the growth of a collective, critical consciousness, and to spur us into action.
GRE99452
Evaluating the Innovative Approaches to Site-Based Teacher Education Project.
Dr Mike Grenfell, Lecturer School of Teaching and Educational Studies Faculty of Education Northern Territory University Darwin NT
This section of the symposium looks at the approach adopted to the evaluation of the project which was conducted according to the principles of transgressive validity. A constructivist view, which sees evaluation as parallel research, is presented.
GRE99690
GRI99631
Paper
Influences of group gender composition on group work - A New Zealand perspective
Grace Grima, University of Otago
This multi-method study explored the extent to which children's task groups with four members and different gender compositions provided their members with a productive and enjoyable experience. The study included three tasks from different curriculum areas (science, language, technology) completed at two age levels (Year Four and Year Eight). For each task, approximately ninety groups were studied.
The analysis of their work focused on a number of variables: the group members' individual participation levels; several group processes (interaction, co-operation and conflict); and the group products. This study also investigated how New Zealand children at Year Four and Year Eight felt about group work in general and about working in groups with different gender compositions. A post-task evaluation was also carried out in order to compare the children's views on their experiences in the different group types. A small number to children were also given the opportunity to give their interpretations of the events that occurred during one group task.
The experience in groups with four boys (4b), three boys and one girl (3b1g), two boys and two girls (2b2g), one boy and three girls (1b3g) and four girls (4g) did not vary consistently across tasks and age levels. No group types were consistently observed to stand out in the analyses at either Year Four or Year Eight. However there was a tendency for the minority student in the 3b1g and the 1b3g groups to participate less than the other group members and/or to participate less than members of their gender group working in other group settings.
The children responded favourably to group work. At Year Four they preferred same gender groups but at Year Eight they responded equally favourably to participating in same gender and gender balanced groups. The post-task evaluations showed that the experience was less enjoyable and less productive for the minority student in the 3b1g and the 1b3g groups. The children's interpretations of their group experience indicated that they could evaluate their own experience but that on several occasions they lacked the necessary skills to cope with potentially adverse situations arising during the group tasks.
Previous research on group dynamics during tasks has often observed stages or activities of tasks and used these observations as the basis for generalised conclusions about the task as a whole or even about group tasks in general. In this study, video analysis showed that group dynamics were in fact inconsistent across the activities that made up each task. An accurate account of group processes occurring in different tasks only emerged when the different activities comprising these tasks were analysed separately.
GRE99851
Paper
GRI99663
Paper
Assessing higher order vocational competencies: A multi source approach
Patrick Griffin and Shelley Gillis, University of Melbourne
This paper investigates an approach to the assessment of higher order competencies in an industrial setting. It addresses a hitherto unresolved issue -how judgements can use multiple sources of evidence to provide information about multiple components of competency (Skills in performing and managing tasks, incorporating the skills into an overall job role, dealing with contingencies and transferring the skills to new contexts). Two areas of investigation underpin this study. The first is identifying a method of obtaining and synthesising data from multiple observers and the second is the method of separating the components of competency as defined for the Australian Training Reform Agenda. Neither of these has been adequately addressed in the Australian Recognition Framework but each is pertinent to almost every industry sector and, in many instances to other forms of distance education. This study shows how evidence can be synthesised and how components can be separated. It also shows how it is possible to identify the influence of peer, self and supervisor judgements on overall decisions of competence.
GRI99664
Evaluation of vocational assessment processes and practices
Patrick Griffin and Shelley Gillis, University of Melbourne
Competency assessment has become a central focus of the Australian industry and economic reform of the 1990s. Successive inquiries and reforms persuaded the Australian Government to undertake a comprehensive restructure of vocational qualifications, using competency based training. Australia followed the example of the UK's NVQ and Scottish Vocational Qualification and placed competency assessment at the forefront of training and credentialling. Given the central role of assessment in the reforms, investigations into ways of improving assessment and assessor training are needed if these are to meet the challenges of supplying the skill level required under the training reform agenda. As yet, only a limited evaluation of assessor training programs has been undertaken. This study examines the validity of workplace assessment practices, the efficacy of self assessment of workplace assessors and examines the differences between assessor trainers' and candidates' assessments. The study produced an instrument for the evaluation of workplace assessor training programs and provides guidance for improving workplace assessor training.
GRI99737
GRO99031
Paper
Students: From Informants to Co-Researchers
Toni Downes and Susan Groundwater-Smith ,Educational Resource & Professional Development Services
Studies centred around the experiences of young people in schools typically position the students as the objects of the research. They are bserved,surveyed, measured, interviewed and commented upon in order to inform a research agenda to which they have made little contribution. They are rarely recognised as active agents, who can not only be reliable informants, but also interpreters of their own lives. The positioning of young people in educational research is analogous to that of women within traditional patriarchal research paradigms. They are at worst, silenced; at best patronised. This, in spite of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which stipulates in Article 12 that the views of the child should be given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
The literature suggests that in those cases where there is an enhanced sense of student agency there are three levels of research activity - knowing about young peopleÝs perspectives; acting on the behalf of young people; and working with young peopleÝs perspectives. There is little evidence of a fourth level, that is acting with young people to improve and change their lifeworld conditions.
This paper will examine a number of case studies undertaken by the authors which provide examples of these three levels of research activity. The studies range from engaging students as informants who can provide constructions of the environment which gives social meaning to their lives;to ones in which the students are co-researchers, contributing to the research questions which are to be put and the manner of their asking. The paper will foreshadow ways in which the fourth level may be achieved by entering into negotiation with students, not only in terms of the research process, but also the ways in which the research outcomes may be used in order to improve some aspects of schooling.
The paper will recognise the problematics associated with the power differentials between adults in education and students. But it will argue that if studentsÝ voices are to become authentic in the research and development cycle then such a differential must be transcended.
GRO99317
Paper
Putting meaning behind bars: Children's interpretations of bar graphs Brian Doig, Australian Council for Educational Research
Susie Groves, Deakin University
A glance at any newspaper shows that graphs of various types play an important part in presenting data to the public. It would appear self-evident that children need to develop 'graphical literacy' as part of their mathematical education.
In the Australian Research Council funded Practical Mechanics in Primary Mathematics project, children made graphs from their own data gathered during practical science experiments, where the graphs were used to assist in interpreting and explaining the observed motion of balls rolling on inclines or falling through the air. As part of this series of mathematically orientated science activities, some 100 upper primary children were involved in measuring the distance travelled by a falling ball and presenting their data in a bar-graph. Children also wrote what they thought was happening to the speed of the ball, basing their comments on the graphs that they had drawn.
The graphs and written comments were analysed from two aspects: the degree to which the graphs conformed to graphical conventions (including accuracy of representation of the data), and what children inferred from their graphs about the motion of the ball. Results of the first analysis showed that while the majority of children understood bar-graph conventions, problems with axes and scales formed the largest area of difficulty. The analysis from the second aspect, that of making inferences from the graph, reveals the children's 'graphical literacy' is at various stages of development.
Examples of children's graphs and comments will be presented, together with detailed results of the analyses.
GRO99601
Paper
Self-directed teacher professional development
Peter Grootenboer, Bethlehem Institute of Education
Professional development often implies study for an advanced qualification, inservice courses or workshops, and personal professional reading. One important purpose here is improvement in pedagogical knowledge and classroom practice. As good as these professional experiences may be, they represent the influence of external agencies on teachers' professional development, and one wonders about the place of continuous self-review as a viable source for the generation of knowledge and skill in educative teaching.
The burgeoning use of action research in inservice teacher education reflects this view that teacher inquiries into their own teaching - being their own researchers - is as empowering, if not more empowering, of professional development than the more usual inservice modes.
This paper discusses application of the action research model with a small group of mathematics teachers in a semi-rural high school. Self-directed professional development stemmed from collaborative review of the teachers' classroom work, reflective analysis of the findings or issues thereto, and subsequent planning and interactive teaching to test the viability of suggested ways of surmounting uncovered problems. Thus over a series of action research cycles, the participants set the agenda for their own review and sourced solutions to the issues they discovered themselves. In so doing they controlled their own professional development, helping to reform their own professional practices.
GUS99815
HAI99198
Paper
A study of the impact of graphics calculators on student achievement in Tertiary entrance examinations in mathematics.
David H. Haimes ,Curtin University of Technology
In November 1998, students in Western Australia had access to graphics calculators when they sat for the Tertiary Entrance Examinations (TEE).This was the first time the use of graphics caculators was allowed in the TEE, and applied to all mathematics examinations and those in the physical sciences. A unique opportunity has been presented for a comparative study of student achievement using the results from the 1997 (pre graphics calculators) and 1998 (post graphics calculators) TEE that will provide data with relevance for teachers of mathematics at both the secondary and tertiary level. The central aim of the study is to establish the extent to which access to graphics calculators has impacted on student achievement in mathematics examinations in the TEE. Whether this will be more significant in certain components of the curriculum, and with concepts such as functions and their applications where the use of a graphics calculator is more appropriate, will also emerge from the analysis of the data. The study will also determine if student performance is enhanced on questions that are more conceptual than procedural when access to graphics calculators is allowed. Whether achievement according to gender or location (urban versus rural) is affected by access to graphics calculators will also be an outcome. Data pertaining to student achievement on the 1997 and 1998 TEE mathematics examinations have been obtained from the Curriculum Council of Western Australia. These are to be supplemented by those from a survey and interviews conducted with students enrolled in first year mathematics courses at Curtin University and who sat the TEE in 1998. The latter data will give further insights into the impact of access to graphics calculators.
HAL99324
Paper
Ethical question for teachers arising from inter-school competition.
Alan Hall, Universtiy of Waikato
The development of a system of self-managing schools in New Zealand has encouraged competition between schools for students and resources. It is now possible for schools to attract enrolments from the catchments of other schools which tends to yield increased resources and improve the educational opportunities for their students at the expense of students in other schools. This raises ethical questions for teachers who work in schools that pursue such initiatives, especially if they help formulate or implement these policies. Are the ethical obligations of teachers only to the pupils of their own schools or do they also have wider ethical responsibilities towards the wider school community and the profession as a whole? The issue is explored by reviewing the professional obligations of teachers and considering whether the relationship between teacher and student is properly a contract or a covenant. It is argued that although a non-tuist stance may be appropriate in economic negotiations it is inappropriate for members of a helping profession. Teachers have ethical responsibilities beyond those to the pupils of their schools.
HAL99766
Paper
Towards research-based early science and technology curriculum:Drawing insights from one child's investigations in his community
Robin Hall, Lynette Schaverien and Mark Cosgrove, Sydney University of Technology
Primary science teachers are not easily able to adopt research-based teaching approaches in early science and technology education. Researchers' attempts to address this problem have typically focused on eliciting children's existing ideas and helping teachers to take account of them. Researchers have largely ignored how such ideas developed. Improved understanding of the evolution of children's ideas appears to us to offer a way to enhance early science and technology education.
In this study, we sought insights into that development in two ways. First, we followed precedents in the history of science and early human development by studying a single case - one young child - over a sustained time. Secondly, we considered whether this child was capable of initiating and pursuing his own curriculum, out of school, in his community but without explicit teaching. In so doing, we explored whether a child could know what and how to teach himself and whether he had learned, issues Plato made explicit in the Meno's paradox.
Using established anthropological methods, Robin participated in this child's community over a two-year period, describing what occurred as this child exploited all the means available to him to satisfy his own technological curiosity. Our findings suggest this child is well able to resolve the Meno's paradox for himself, without a teacher, within his community over time. We speculate on the implications of such a finding, noting the harmony between this reconception of education and current attempts to develop computer-mediated environments in which learners can teach themselves.
HAM99175
The role of elaboration and a graphic organiser on learning from text
Richard Hamilton,University of Auckland
Background.
The Material Appropriate Processing (MAP) framework suggests that the influence of a text adjunct on the learning and transfer of textual information will be a function of the overlap between the type of processing induced by the adjunct and by the focus and organisation of the text. The greater the degree to which the adjunct and the text facilitate complementary types of processing, the greater the influence on learning and transfer of textual information.
Aims.
This study examined the effects of four elaborative treatments on learning concepts from text. The treatments differed as to the degree to which students were induced to perform complementary types of processing due to the text and adjunct aids.
Sample.
Participants were approximately 80 university students who were enrolled in a first year introductory course in Psychology.
Methods.
Students studied a passage that asked them to create personal examples of the target concepts or contrast the target concepts. In addition, half the students in each condition received a relational graphic that represented how the four target concepts were related to each other. Students took a criterion test that consisted of recall of concept definitions and teaching examples, classification of novel examples, and problem solving scenarios.
Results & Conclusions.
Results are discussed within the context of the MAP framework and implications are derived as to its usefulness in helping in the design and development of text and text adjunct environments.
HAR99023
Challenges for eductional research
Kevin Harris,Macquarie University
Educational research currently faces unprecedented challenge. While its scope and range have been expanded by recent philosophical trends, emancipation from positivist restrictions has led not only to increasing charges of research exceeding the limits of epistemological legitimacy; but also educational research in general has become particularly vulnerable to social and political attack.While in the USA educational researchers are themselves criticising their discipline through 'Educational Researcher', and while in Australia AARE has themed its last three Annual Conferences in terms of discussing the nature, status and value of educational research, it is in Britain that much of the 'real' action has taken place. The Blair Government, via David Blunkett, has used recent reports, most notably the Tooley Report (1998), to back policy funding only 'focused and effective' research; Baroness Blackstone has expressed seriously-taken concerns about 'unfocused' research; while Chris Woodhead, Chief at the ostensibly neutral body OFSTED, appears to be openly supportingrecognisable conservative academic and political agendas relating toeducational research.Educational researchers in Universities now face two major problems.Firstly; less government funding is being provided for researchingeducation, within a general reorientation of government functionsstrongly suggestive that previous relations and levels are unlikelyto be restored. This has led Universities to set up ResearchCompanies rather than fund research from Government grants, andresearchers to seek funding from less traditional, less 'public'sources (job advertisements now routinely ask applicants todemonstrate their capacity to attract research funds). Secondly; agrowing ideological conservatism has become well positioned toprominently influence what shall be researched, how it will beresearched, and consequently what shall be found and legitimated. Onboth counts the academic voice faces unprecedented challenge.This paper, written in the UK during the latter half of 1999,examines how current challenges to educational research are being metwhere they are, arguably, hitting hardest.
HAR99064
Paper
A decade of change for tertiary Education and Science Research in New Zealand: Who benefits?"
Sharon Harvey, Auckland Institute of Techhnology
The paper considers the key changes in tertiary education research and the national science regime under neo-liberal governments in New Zealand. It tracks the moves in both systems owards mounting contestability and integration for increased economic performance.This investigation questions whether government policies around knowledge production will be successful in giving New Zealand entree into the much-touted "knowledge society" and whether this is a desirable goal for the country, anyway. Finally, it looks at other possibilities for the production of knowledge and the conditions within which it occurs.......
HAR99065
Paper
Foresight or foreclosure? An examination of the foresight project and its implications for research in the tertiary education sector.
Sharon Harvey,Auckland Instititute Of Technology
At the beginning of 1998, the New Zealand Ministry of Research, Science and Technology set in train an ambitious consultative process known as the Foresight project to begin to "rethink" and prioritise research directions for New Zealand into the next century. This paper utilises a poststructural analysis to examine the reasons for the project and track its progress over 1998 and 1999.
Particular emphasis will be given to: issues of representation; theconcept of knowledge as "science"; links to and consequences for tertiary education; as well as what these mean for available constructions of "research" in New Zealand.
HAR99293
The place of educational theory in an applied degree: Perceptions of first year B.Ed.
Jennifer Harnett,Aukland College of Education
The Bachelor of Education (Teaching) degree is a three year professional degree consisting of three interlocking strands: Professional Education and Knowledge, Curriculum Knowledge and Practice, and Professional Inquiry and Practice. Within the Professional Education and Knowledge strand students are required to complete four compulsory education modules over the three years of their programme.
Departing from the traditional structure of introducing students to psychology, sociology, and history as separate courses, the first year education module utilsed an integrative appproach. Students were introduced to the notion that there are complementary and competing theories that affect and inform teaching and learning. Using different "theoretical lenses" the course laid the foundation of psychological, sociological, and historical perspectives in relation to children in the social contexts of the family, educational settings, and society.
This paper explores the ways in which these theoretical perspectives have assisted students in relation to three key areas: their understanding of curriculum content, their interpretation of practicum experiences, and their ability to identify a number of structural constraints which may affect teaching and learning.
HAR99319
Paper
A decade of self-management in New Zealand schools: What have we learned?
Barbara Harold, University of Waikato
A key feature of school self-management was the expectation that it would lead to better learning. There is increasing realisation that this may not necessarily be the case; in New Zealand (Wyllie, 1997), in Canada (Summers and Johnson, 1996) and in the United States (Smith, Scoll and Link, 1996). This paper will report the findings from a new study of seven diverse schools, which was specifically designed to explore both multiple and cumulative aspects of a decade of school reform in New Zealand. The study was a qualitative one which employed wide-ranging interviews with teachers, senior staff and members of the schools' governing body. This paper focuses on those findings relating to the impact of self-management on aspects of school policy and practice such as, the roles of the principal, teachers and students, programmes of pastoral care and guidance, teaching and learning, school-community relationships, and on education of Maori children. The paper outlines how educational debate and policy in and across these areas is actually being interpreted and translated into practice by those in various roles within schools. The extent to which the patterns in these schools simply confirm the findings of previous research or indicate significant points of departure which might warrant further investigation is also discussed.
HAR99545
Initial report on evaluation of professional development project to enhance the teaching of global perspectives in Victorian schools
Barry Harris, University of Western Sydney, Nepean
This paper presents an initial report on the evaluation of a multi-faceted professional development program that aims to increase the understanding and skills of educators of global education. The program is conducted by the Geography Teachers' Association of Victoria Inc through funding provided by AusAID. It will be conducted from 1999 to 2002 and will involve teachers from K-12 Victorian Government and Non-Government schools, University pre-service students and curriculum consultants/advisers.
The evaluation uses formative methods and focuses upon a number of dimensions. The first dimension involves the identification of change or growth in participants' knowledge, skills, understanding and attitudes as a result of the professional development experience. The second dimension is concerned with the impact the program had upon participants' professional practice and the curriculum in their schools up to 18 months after the professional development experience. The third dimension involves a study of changes in students' learning outcomes as a result of the professional development experienced by teachers. This dimension will be evaluated through a number of school-based case studies. The fourth dimension involves an evaluation of the professional development delivery processes used throughout the program.
The paper discusses a number of challenges involved in evaluating the outcomes of this type of professional development programme.
HAR99619
HAT99392
HAT99428
HAU99429
HAW99334
Paper
SYMPOSIUM 12
Participatory action research: Collaborating to produce worthwhile knowledge.
Sub Theme: Defining Worthwhile knowledge.
Brian Coles, Alan Cox, Daniel Haddock, Penny Haworth and Luanna Meyer, Massey University
SYMPOSIUM OUTLINE
This symposium explores the outcomes from a group of participatory action research (PAR) projects initiated by Massey University College of Education, and carried out collaboratively by University researchers and local teachers. Key benefits from the PAR approach are said to include greater insights into classroom practices and increased motivation to make use of and disseminate findings (Bailey, 1998; Freeman, 1998; Poskitt, 1995). This symposium shows how these outcomes are often just the 'tip of the iceberg'.
In particular, three common themes which arose in the course the PAR projects will be highlighted during the presentation: PAR as a model for professional development; issues related to balancing power in the establishment and maintenance of effective relationships with teachers as co-researchers; and the role of children in PAR.
Plan for the Organisation of the Symposium This symposium will involve a varied approach, with an overview of the projects, background to key issues using concrete examples from the projects, and interactive activities which will involve participants in problem-solving related to the participatory action research model.
Paper 1:
SLA99336
Participatory action research as a professional development model
Brian Coles, Massey University
While the main focus of action-research projects is usually on developing specific aspects of educational practice, wider professional development processes run parallel to this central focus and provide an additional source of learning for participants involved. In particular, collaborative features of projects such as those represented in this symposium, introduce a dimension in which team members are compelled to consider other perspectives, realities and possibilities than their own. This paper examines the contention that in doing so the action-research process moves participants beyond merely problem solving, or even problem posing, to consideration of educational issues of a deeper philosophical and theoretical nature. The nexus between theory construction and professional practice, it will be argued, is thereby enhanced. This discussion will be illustrated with a number of examples from a range of PAR projects, and in particular that on using portfolios for assessment in science education.
Paper 2:
HAW99337
Paper
Participatory action research as a way of balancing the scales
Penny Haworth and Daniel Haddock
Traditionally, research has maintained a power differential between the researchers who carry out research on teachers and teaching, and the teachers who are supposedly the intended beneficiaries of the research.
Oakley (1994) characterises this as the difference between research by researchers and research for those being researched. This paper examines the potential of participatory action research (PAR) as a way of balancing the knowledge of teachers and researchers, and allowing the knowledge of each to be valued. Participants in the symposium will have the opportunity to evaluate the potential effects of a range of practical strategies for establishing and maintaining effective relationships among participants in PAR projects. Examples from several PAR projects will be included to illustrate key ideas in this topic. In particular, practical examples will be used from a specific PAR project which focused on a Ministry of Education assessment package for identifying those students from a non-English speaking background who required resource funding. This project aimed to link the assessment package with the establishment of effective aims and strategies for teaching.
Paper 3:
COX99338
Paper
Children's role in participatory action research
Alan Cox
A fundamental premise of participatory action research is that researchers work with teachers in a cooperative team to explore how particular aspects of learning and teaching can be improved for the benefit of children.
Children are central to this endeavour. This brings an interesting dimension to school-based research. When a project requires frequent observational visits to the classroom by visiting lecturers, the children being observed become not only the subjects for the study, but also participating researchers, to some degree aware of the focus of the project and their role in it. This paper draws on the experiences of small school-college research teams. Findings include: the positive results when children develop their own meta-cognitive understanding through being active participants (eg in devising 'rules' for group discussion, or in deciding the criteria for self assessment of portfolios); the difficulty of balancing the focus on content with the focus on process; the tendency for some children to resort to formulaic behaviour; the probability of pre-existing peer relationships influencing the process when children are empowered as monitor-observers; the readiness of children to become participants in the process under study; and the insights of children when these are not shared by their teachers.
HAY99212
Genealogical tales about educational provision in Australia since colonisation: Tracing the descent of discourses of gender equity.
Debra Hayes, The University of Queensland
This paper explores what a genealogy of educational provision might look like. It contextualises this exploration by briefly addressing the questions:(1) what is genealogy, and;(2)why use genealogy in educational research? However, the central purpose of this paper is to illustrate two approaches, derived from genealogy, that describe the provision of education in Australia. The first approach utilises genealogical "glimpses" that prise open spaces within which emerge inklings of other discursive possibilities and, the second approach, utilises tracings that map the descent of discourses of educational provision. These approaches illustrate genealogy's unsettling tendencies-raising questions, producing knowledge, describing new subjectivities and destabilising power relations. Although unsettling, it is argued that these tendencies make genealogy useful in educational research.
HAY99654
Digging into learning areas
Felicity Haynes, University of Western Australia
How did we get to our current categorisation of school subjects into K-12 key learning areas? Is it merely a matter of pragmatics or does it carry over dated notions of forms of knowledge? How, for instance, did Nature Studies become Science and Cooking become Home Economics? Is the distinction between the Social Sciences and the Sciences still feasible in either a constructivist or realist paradigm? Has English any identity left at all and does it matter? This paper carries out a shallow Foucauldian archaeological dig of the Arts learning area in particular. It concludes that there are more differences than similarities between the disparate arts, and that the invisible and incoherent political and philosophical assumptions underpinning their current collocation in the Australian curricula can give teachers little sense of purpose in their daily teaching.
HAY99795
HAY99797
Paper
Sex matters in schools
Felicity Haynes, University of Western Australia
Schools normalise the binary gender/sex distinction between male and female, thus rendering invisible all those who might sit on the androgynous borderline between the two. This paper briefly examines institutional assumptions underlying gender identification and some of the consequences of assuming that gays, lesbians, transsexuals, transvestites, hermaphrodites, and other intersex people should present socially as either male or female. Using the example of Klinefelter Syndrome to detail some consequences of accepting medical definitions as a basis for classroom treatment, it argues that revising the possibility of androgyny, and incidentally traditional distinctions between sex and gender, may result in a more gender inclusive education.
HEI99610
Paper
Traditional pen-and-paper vs mental approaches to computation: The lesson of Adrien
Ann Heirdsfield, Tom Cooper and Calvin Irons, Queensland University of Technology
New mathematics syllabi are facing the issue of whether to discontinue the emphasis on traditional pen-and-paper algorithms and replace it with a focus on self initiated written algorithms, mental computation and number sense. Efficient and effective strategies for mental computation differ markedly from those that underlie traditional algorithms. They tend to be more wholistic and less reliant on separation into place values. These strategies often reflect the strategies required for estimation, and are more closely related to the spontaneous computational activity of children. This paper discusses traditional and mental approaches to computation in relation to the mental strategies for multiplication and division word problems employed by a child, Adrien, over a three-year period from 1993 to 1996 (Years 4 to 6). Although he was considered to be a higher ability student, Adrien was not a "lightning calculator", nor was he capable of such calculative feats as products of two eight-digit numbers. However, he was successful at multiplying and dividing two and three-digit numbers before such calculations were taught because he employed his own efficient and (it could be argued) advanced strategies that exhibited more number sense than the classroom taught traditional algorithms. His strategies exhibited both change and consistency and showed associated understandings. His performance highlighted the possibilities for computation syllabi where children are allowed to develop their own spontaneous strategies and indicated the disadvantages for syllabi, such as that still existing in Queensland, where traditional algorithms are still a major component.
HEN99344
Defining Worthwhile Knowledge - The Rudd Report and the pursuit of Asia Literacy.
Deborah Henderson, Queensland University of Technology
In February 1994, the Council of Australian Governments endorsed the report, 'Asian languages and Australia's Economic Future' (the Rudd Report). The report's policy prescription assumed that a particular form of knowledge would foster an 'export culture' in the school system and thereby contribute to the national interest. It detailed a proposal for a compulsory national Asian languages and cultures strategy for national implementation. The report's chief architect, Kevin Rudd, was convinced that political power was essential for achieving the policy goal of a national strategy for Asia literacy in Australian schools.
This paper will critique the implications of the use of political power to determine what form of knowledge was considered to be worthwhile in the national interest. In particular, it will set the report in its historical context to explore not only why political power was used to commission and endorse an education policy, but also to critique the nature of the policy outcome. The core argument is that Asian languages and Australia's Economic Future was based solely on an economic rationale which was not appropriate to the task of fostering Asia literacy in the Australian education system. However, this paper will also argue that the first implementation period broadened the economism of the report and set the foundations for Asian languages and cultures education in schools.
HER99084
Paper
What do students remember from lectures?: The role of episodic memory in early learning.
Debra Herbert,University of Queensland
Recent research (Conway, Gardiner, Perfect, Anderson & Cohen,1997; Herbert & Burt, 1998) has suggested that early in learning, students memory representations are dominated by those in episodic memory. As learning continues and schematisation occurs, students' knowledge is more likely to be dominated by semantic memory. This shift in memory and schematisation is shown through investigation of the memory awareness involved when students are required to recall information; 'remember' awareness is linked to the episodic memory system and 'just know' awareness is linked to the semantic memory system. The purpose of the present research is to further investigate the role that episodic memory plays in early learning. A group of university students were presented with either episodically 'rich' material or episodically 'poor' material (such as examples with few distinctive or salient details). Students completed a multi-choice test and short answer question after both a two day and a one month time interval. Students who studied the episodically 'rich' material showed a greater quantity of 'remember' memory awareness on both testing occasions as well as a greater degree of schematisation, than those who studied the episodically 'poor' material. These results are discussed in conjunction with those from a qualitative interview study of students' learning experiences with university lectures. It is concluded that for effective teaching and learning, concepts should be illustrated with meaningful, and hence, memorable, examples. This not only leads to better learning for students, but also to greater enjoyment and involvement in the classroom.
HER99699
HIC99134
Teaching practical subject matter using on-line technologies
Christopher Hickey,& Richard Tinning, Deakin University
The possibility of using digital technologies as a medium for the delivery of physical education teacher education programs clearly now exists. The explosion of the World Wide Web in the last decade now offers a raft of on-line possibilities, not least of which is the capacity to engage participants in 'real time' conversations. The provision of more flexible modes of study within the social landscape of a more flexible work force makes a lot of sense. Indeed, pressures to engage 'new' modes of course delivery in teacher education programs appear to be gathering momentum.
Notwithstanding the rhetoric of a more efficient and effective practice, the emergence and/or proliferation of a technological culture in physical education teacher education are intensely problematic. Ironically, the application of computer-mediated communication devices flies in the face of physical education's commitment to moving, skilling and disciplining young bodies.
In this presentation we present our foray into the field of techno-mediated delivery in a physical education teacher education program at Deakin University. The great challenge for us has been to engage students in multi-media modes of delivery in ways that accommodate our philosophical commitment to foster a 'critically reflective' approach to physical education pedagogy. In our application of the notion of 'critical reflection' we unapologetically foreground a particular epistemology of learning that views knowledge as a social, political and personal construct.
HIC99172
Paper
Designing responsive online learning environments: approaches to supporting students
Margaret Hicks, Ian Reid, and Rigmor George, University of South Australia
Higher education is undergoing major changes in the learning needs of students and professional development of teachers. These changes arise from a range of social, economic and technical factors operating across the higher education sector. The use of technology in both teaching and learning is both a response to, and a reason for, these changed practices. Technology provides new ways of catering for the traditional learning needs of students and also enables new forms of support appropriate to technology based delivery.
One of the outcomes of the increased use of technology is the development of online approaches to teaching and learning. This requires a reconceptualisation of the role of support mechanisms for students and professional development opportunities for staff. This paper proposes a convergence of the roles of student support and professional development in the online context to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of student learning.
The paper identifies a framework for the consideration of approaches to student learning support in the online environment. These include: generic support ,parallel and adjunct learning opportunities and embedded approaches. It examines these approaches in relation to the characteristics of pedagogically defensible teaching activity and proposes ways of conceptualising the work practices of professional staff involved in student support, professional development, discipline-based teaching and resource development. Each approach will be discussed in terms of its pedagogical potential and will be illustrated with examples.
HIC99204
HIE99722
Graphophonemic awareness and its role in early spelling instruction
Penny Hieronymus and David Evans, University of Western Sydney Macarthur
Phonemic awareness is an important aspect of early literacy development, and is predictive of later difficulties in learning to read (O'Connor et al, 1999). The development of phonemic awareness skills is also linked with the development of early spelling knowledge. Another important component of learning to spell is graphophonemic awareness. Graphophonemic awareness, the "ability to match up letters or graphemes in the spellings of words to sounds or phonemes detected in pronunciations", and has received little attention in the research (Ehri & Soffer, 1999, p. 1). The development of graphophonemic awareness skills across grades is shown to be weakest in those students with spelling knowledge. Therefore, development of a strong working knowledge of graphophonemic awareness skills, and the alphabetic principle, is theoretically important for those at-risk of experiencing difficulties learning.
This paper outlines the results of an experimental study in which 72 Year 1 students received one of three instructional programs. The three programs comprised:
- spelling activities;
- spelling activities, phonemic awareness
- spelling activities, phonemic awareness, graphophonemic awareness
Data were analysed using a series of one way ANOVA's to address the study hypotheses. The study hypothesised that students who received all three components of the program would demonstrate greater knowledge in correctly spelling target words, generalisation to unseen words, and synthetic words.
The results from this study will be discussed in terms of program development in the early years, and for those students at-risk of experiencing difficulties learning. Specific focus will given to:
- the interplay with reading development;
- the role phonemic awareness in developing spelling knowledge;
- teaching graphophonemic awareness in the classroom; and
- ensuring that meaning is the key focus of literacy programs.
HIG99493
Paper
Teachers' pedagogical content knowledge and classroom practice in number concepts in mathematics in the third year of schooling
Joanna Higgins, Wellington College of Education
The study involved ten teachers taking part in a teacher development programme for year 3 mathematics teaching. The teachers were asked to articulate their content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of number, with a particular emphasis on place value. This knowledge was compared and contrasted with the teachers' pedagogical reasoning used in their interactions with students in observed classroom practice, and with their choice of representations for teaching number concepts. The comparisons included the range of such representations employed and the ways in which these were used. Unsurprisingly those who were best able to articulate their knowledge appeared to exhibit the best practice in teaching place value. An analysis that is informed by emergent qualitative enquiry traces the ways in which teacher practice and the articulation of knowledge appeared to be connected, and also considers the wider factors which teachers perceived to shape their classroom practice. Such factors included teachers' overall goals for year 3 students, the transition from what teachers perceived to be a less to more formal teaching approach, and teachers' beliefs about the importance of providing "hands-on" experiences for learning mathematics. The study suggests the nature of the content and pedagogical content knowledge that is critical to best practice at year 3, and describes the implications of this for teacher education.
HIL99053
Focussing the teacher's gaze: Primary teachers reconstructing assessment in self managing schools.
Mary Hill,University of Waikato
As a result of the changes to school administration and curriculum in New Zealand over the last ten years, primary teachers have had to make significant changes to their assessment practices. This paper briefly reviews literature relating to the competing discourses of assessment that underpin teachers' pratices. It describes how the changes to New Zealand education have provoked a reconsideration of the balance between assessment for formative purposes designed to enhance learning and summative assessment, often used for accountability reasons. It then reports findings from a qualitative investigation into how some primary teachers have attempted to accomodate these competing discourses and the effects these have had on their teaching practice.
HIL99056
Paper
What does it take to change minds?: Preservice teachers and conceptual change
Lola Hill ,Deakin University
The research addresses two issues. First, learners benefit from utonomy-supportive teaching and teacher educators must help teachers adopt autonomy-supportive styles in order to meet the needs of learners more effectively. Second, improving the quality of thinking of teachers is of fundamental importance because such improvement will better equip teachers to meet learners' needs and deal with the increasingly diverse and complex issues teachers face. According to the Perry scheme of intellectual and ethical development, relatively advanced intellectual functioning is characterised by, for example, awareness that agency is within oneself, critical and reflective thinking and judgement, tolerance of doubt and ambiguity, the capacity to build and evaluate competing legitimate theories, and a view of authorities as sources, not of Answers, but of expertise. I describe a preservice teacher education program in educational psychology designed to promote primary and secondary preservice teachers' intellectual development and autonomy-supportive pedagogical approaches. The school-based program is a collaborative endeavour between schools and university staff, and provides opportunities for preservice teachers to engage in a continuing cycle of theory, practice, and reflection in a supportive and challenging context. The research findings suggest that the program promotes preservice teachers' intellectual development as manifested in, among other things, movement away from dualistic and absolutist thinking, increasing realisation of self-agency and the value of supporting learners' autonomy, and enhanced critical and reflective thinking.
HIL99310
Paper
Schools at Risk: Dilemmas and Solutions
Jan Hill and Kay Hawk, Massey University: Albany Campus
Schools at risk place students at risk. In the last five years, the presenters have worked in over twenty primary and secondary schools that, for a range of reasons, have been identified as schools seriously at risk. Most of their work in these schools has been in a research capacity. Many of the projects have spanned a number of years, providing special insights which only longitudinal studies can provide. The paper outlines the key risk factors for these schools and, in particular, explores socio-economic, leadership, staff turnover and teacher quality issues. It also looks at the impact of factors such as unresolved conflicts and a falling roll. Very often, these schools are faced with a number of particular dilemmas associated with being at risk. The paper explores the response of these schools to dilemmas associated with achievement expectations, student and family dependency, cultural issues, honesty with stakeholder groups and organisational restructuring. How the dilemmas are resolved is critical to the ability of the schools to turn themselves around. Successful interventions at both a macro and micro level are discussed. The paper concludes with a number of implications for policy decision-makers and school leaders whose actions are pivotal to ensuring that students at these schools are given equitable opportunities.
HIL99582
Paper
Con/testing learning models
Gaell Hildebrand, University of Melbourne
Projects that seek to disrupt hegemonic pedagogical practices in schools have usually faced high levels of resistance, from both teachers and students. I contend that this is because they have implicitly contested the underlying metaphor about learning through their attempts to challenge the power/knowledge systems that perpetuate inequities and sustain the current regimes of truth in society. As Anna Sfard (1998) highlighted, for centuries we have based our learning models on a metaphor of "acquisition", and it is only in recent years that learning models such as Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's (1991) "situated cognition" have shifted to "participation" as the underlying metaphor. This paper shows how both metaphors can be seen as continua with extreme positions having a passive or active orientation. For example the passive end of the acquisition metaphor is where the transmission model of learning sits, while radical constructivism is at the active end. In this paper I show that while situated cognition is a participatory learning model, it still has a passive orientation. I show that the commonly resisted innovative pedagogical practices frequently use a new model of learning as their referent: one located at the active end of the participation metaphor. I propose that this learning model is "critical activism", illustrate how it draws on critical and feminist pedagogies, and argue that it re/presents a way forward for classroom practice.
HIL99724
Teaching spelling: A comparison of four motoric conditions
Jenny Hilzinger and David Evans, University of Western Sydney Macarthur
Learning to spell is a critical component of written communication. Failure to acquire minimal spelling knowledge results in an inability to convey meaning, and for students to respond in a manner that is required for them to participate in classroom tasks and activities. Instructional strategies used in classrooms to ensure all students learn to spell involve a number of motoric activities (e.g., oral, written, computer tasks, flash cards or letter tiles). When learning to spell, students expend considerable cognitive energy acquiring early knowledge. The motoric activity that students utilise when learning to spell, therefore, could interfere with the acquisition of spelling knowledge if it is poorly developed, or if the motoric activity is novel to the student (e.g., computer keyboard skills). An additional modifying factor was the link that is made with learning to read (e.g., phonemic knowledge, letter-sound knowledge). This paper presents the results of an experimental study (4 x 2 factorial design) in which 24 Year 1 students were taught to spell a corpus of 40 target words using four motoric activities. The implications of this study for classroom practice will be discussed, including:
- the relationship between motoric activities used in teaching spelling;
- how early spelling programs can be designed to ensure students transfer spelling knowledge from one motoric activity to another;
- link the development of spelling knowledge with early reading.
HIL99802
HIL99807
HOD99050
Paper
The effect of process interaction on learning outcomes of the technological curriculum
Judy Hodgman, University of Tasmania.
Currently, learning objectives or outcomes of the technology curriculum are facilitated by an 'interaction model' (see Brady 1988). That is, the interaction of a design process with an objective-based assessment process. This paper sets out the theoretical and practical context of an investigation that seeks to explain how and why an 'interaction model' does not necessarily support the development of learners' formative and summative design evaluations, personal goal setting and values.
An embedded single case study design (see Yin 1994) was chosen for the investigation as it allowed for the exploration of propositions. These provided a conceptual basis for the closed-ended questionnaire that was used to survey teachers in their role as facilitators of a design and project-based curriculum. Statistical analysis provided data concerned with the implementation of the two processes (embedded units). The first test applied to these raw data calculated the correlation coefficients between each individual item with all other items. A discriminant validity test was then used to estimate the mean magnitude of the correlation of a factor with all other factors. Correlation coefficients that were statistically significant were identified. As a result, little or no relationship was shown to exist between a design process and an objective-based assessment process. This paper offers an explanation as to how this lack of interaction affects students'approach to design project work and its subseqent affect on the development of personal goals, values, and formative and summative design evaluations.
HOE99771
Paper
Motivational variables affecting coping resources among gifted adolescents
Katherine Hoekman and Dr. John McCormick, University of New South Wales
Surveying the literature on burnout in adults from various occupations, Pines (1993) has suggested that while definitions of burnout vary considerably, they all tend to describe the end result of a process in which highly motivated and committed individuals lose their spirit. This vein of research has informed this study of adolescent perceptions of their first year of high school. The participants in this preliminary study were 540 Year 7 students comprised of: 402 gifted students grouped in selective high schools, 76 gifted students grouped in accelerated cohorts, and a mixed ability group of 62 students. Students were surveyed on a number of motivational and affective variables which have been linked to satisfaction with school. The results suggest that idealism, without commensurate sense of accomplishment or appropriate feedback, may make optimistic individuals more susceptible to reporting lack of satisfaction or strain on coping resources. The fact that optimism accounted for a considerable proportion of the variation in the satisfaction with school reported highlights the need for educators to acknowledge not only the importance of intrapersonal variables, but the relevance of preventative strategies in the adult burnout literature.
HOG99095.
Paper
Critically reflective practice and workplace learning: Are they compatible?
Ms Carol Hogan and Dr Barry Down ,Edith Cowan University,
Professional practica are an essential part of teacher education and other professional education programs, but university staff often express concern that prac experiences are fundamentally conservative, emphasising preparation for the status quo rather than for what might be. In recent years other forms of workplace-based university learning have been devised, where staff have sought to build units around a core of reflective practice, action research and professional development. This paper describes one such initiative, a final semester internship for fourth year education students which enabled them to design and negotiate their own professional development plans in any one of a wide variety of educational settings. These included educational publishers,seniors programs, mining companies, environmental education projects, grief counselling, performing arts and community literacy programs, among others. The internship was conceived as a collaborative action research project, so the experiences of all participants have been used as part of the ongoing process of shaping and improving the internship as an opportunity for self-directed personal-professional development.
HOL99025
Research into Gender and discipline in the early Twentieth Century Classroom
Allyson Holbrook & Jo May University of Newcastle
What can historical research into classrooms tell us about the construction of masculinitiesand femininities? This paper looks at the ways in which teachers kept orderin the intimateenvironment of their classrooms, and in what ways this was gendered in itsnature, itsinterpretation (by those children who observed it) and its intent. Theanalysis is based onprimary source materials and oral history data from more than 200 interviewsundertakenwith people who attended schools in NSW 1930-1950. The main aim of theinterviewswas to elicit in-depth information about individual transition throughschool and intowork, and as might be expected one of the key sub-themes for analysis wasgender.Another secondary aim was to try and gain as much first-hand knowledge aspossibleabout school life. The data is rich in both elements, and in respect to thelatter there isextensive information about how the young perceived teacher control andtheir expectationsabout teacher control. This paper builds on an earlier study of classroomdiscipline (basedon a different 100 informants) reported at this conference by the firstauthor four yearsago and subsequently published.
HOL99638
HOL99651
Paper
The development of a schema for learning and teaching based on a reconsideration of learning outcomes and learning conditions
Royce Holliday, Charles Sturt University
The paper reports on the development of an innovative schema for planning learning and teaching. It is one which can guide the planning, conduct and evaluation of learning undertaken by students at school and university levels. It can guide the planning, conduct and evaluation of teacher professional learning programs.
The paper describes how notions of learning outcomes and learning conditions have been reconsidered and redefined in the light of research into how teachers and university students say they best learn.
The schema requires three types of learning outcomes to be considered: 1) Learning To Be outcomes, 2) Learning About outcomes, and 3) Learning To Do outcomes, the most important being the first. It is also recognises the importance of five synergetically related conditions of learning: 1) Self-affirmation, 2) Personal Meaning, 3) Authentic Action, 4) Collaboration, and 5) Empowerment and relates these conditions to the outcomes. The schema uses an "entry point" procedure, which shows how the constellation of learning conditions can be entered one at a time, although all needing to work together in order to achieve Learning To Be outcomes.
HOL99850
Paper
Using education indexes to map research trends
Allyson Holbrook, University of Newcastle and Margaret Findlay and Sebastian Misson, Australian Council for Educatioal Research
Every educational researcher is familiar with the use of education indexes to locate topics or areas of research. However, indexes such as the Australian Education Index (AEI) and the Bibliography of Education Theses in Australia (BETA) constitute an extremely valuable resource in other ways. First, the electronic version of the AEI contains education publications information with a research emphasis that spans almost two decades. It can be used to obtain a profile of research activity by means of interrogation of the data bases using multiple descriptors. Secondly it can be used to assist in the development of coding categories for research activity. Educational research is notoriously difficult to classify because the field of education draws on multiple disciplines, separately and in combination. Any one research article is most meaningfully coded at a number of levels, as is evident in the AEI. But what is ideal is not necessarily helpful in more pragmatic contexts, such as attempting to gain a reliable estimate of the thrust of research endeavour in any one institution or time period. The AEI can be used to devise verifiable coding frameworks that work in contexts where information may be restricted to project titles alone. This paper reports on a methodology that utilises the AEI and BETA to map and elaborate on trends in educational research in Australia.
HOO99316
HOP99270
Curriculum clues 'on the fly'
Josie Hopkins, Methodist Ladies College
Much credence is given to educational ideas like constructivism, integration of pastoral programmes, and holistic approaches to student learning. Often staff struggle to develop and implement innovative practices which might engender the 'whole person' approach. In this study, initial surveys and interviews of staff members revealed that the monumental printed curriculum documents rarely assist individuals to make sense of their role in the 'big picture'. Staff indicated that meetings rarely addressed the whole curriculum as it was difficult to establish a common starting point for discussion.
In the second phase of the research, a fully searchable Intranet based curriculum system was established on the school server. This allowed search and review from the perspective preferred by the user, with easy database update access for all staff, web pages created 'on the fly', and prompted interactive scope and sequence details spanning the whole school. Data collected in this phase consisted of surveys, interviews, tracking of the use of the Silversearch curriculum system and monitoring of staff meetings.
Change (if any) in teacher views and practices regarding curriculum planning, projects and collaboration is currently being tracked. Comparisons between staff responses are made according to experience and position of responsibility at every stage. This presentation will review the research results to date.
HOP99759
In the line of site
Josie Hopkins, Methodist Ladies College
In the 'wired' learning environments of today, our students are able to explore new modes of presentation, employ many different learning preferences, and reflect on some of their own learning processes. The teacher must also become learner constantly upgrading skills, examining their own epistemology and classroom practice, and seeking innovations which engender maximum learning opportunities. The teacher remains a pivotal element in the successful employment of computers in student learning.
This workshop will review the motivation and practicalities of wholesale employment of digital delivery in (and out of) the classroom, in particular the process of planning and construction, and experiences using a comprehensive subject Website. Special attention will be paid to the hypertext genre and the many digital 'environments' being delivered through one site. This session will also review how remote access has altered the 'classroom' dynamic and work practices for many students.
HOU99817
The relationship between attitudes to computing and computer usage: An investigation among female VCE Psychology students
Gerard Houlihan, Methodist Ladies' College
The relationship between attitudes to computing and usage of computer utilities was explored among a sample of 104 female senior secondary school students in Australia. Subjects who reported higher use in computer mediated communication (email, internet, chat) indicated a more positive attitude towards computers there was no correlation with utilities such as word processing. There are necessary implications for the development of future attitude indices, particularly in determining the behavioural component.
This paper will be presented as part of Symposium JOH99135 Mapping learning communities at Methodist Ladies College.
HOW99257
Paper
Mentoring - transforming school cultures
Sue Howard, Queensland School Curriculum Council
Research has indicated that local school factors affect teacher professional development, yet discussion of the link between mentoring programs for beginning teachers and aspects of the organisation in which they occur is sparse in the literature. This paper explores these links through a case study of a Queensland school involved in a district mentoring program. It draws on semi-structured interviews with eight participants, designed as part of the evaluation of the program. It is argued that leadership in the school and the existence of a formal mentoring program legitimised behaviours enacting key values which supported a cultural change in the school.
HOW99441
HOW99727
HUA99308
Effects on school innovation by Principal in Taiwan
Huang Yu-Mei, National Chengchi University
In the recently, every country in the world get more and more hard work on educational innovation, to ascend the competition on the world. Our country not an exception, also get more eyes on this issue. So for a short while, educational innovation become a best seller, turn into a subject of debate for the government carry politics and the civil voice supreme.
Although the traditional research about an organization in the past, all believe that school is a loose-linked organization, a school head facing the teachers' work can get few influences. Recently, studies about school efficiency report that school can do something to improve teaching systematically in some kind situation, and school principal is the key role for effects. A lot of papers discovered a leadership of school principal will do some extent effects on school and give certain contributions (Firestone & Wilson, 1989; Dinham et al, 1995; Shum and Cheng, 1997).
In fact, the principal who in the educational system just now, can get both social, political supports and understanding still. To be a principal indeed not so easy but reward. Honestly, many human beings wanted to be! This situation the same as my country. This paper try to be aimed at the education innovation issues from the school aspect to discuss the effects on school innovation by principal in Taiwan.
HUN99307
Paper
Knowing and Teaching: Using Portfolios to Develop Context-Specific Knowledge.
Janet Hunter, Edith Cowan University
Remote and rural schools in Western Australia tend to be staffed by newly graduated teachers, or teachers in their first years of teaching experience. While these teachers bring with them an abundance of energy and enthusiasm, together with training in the most recent developments in pedagogy, they have not yet developed the depth of practical knowledge held by many experienced teachers. In these schools, a further issue is non-Aboriginal teachers' inexperience in dealing with Aboriginal children. These children are over-represented in remote and rural contexts, and over represented at lower levels of achievement in literacy (Ministry of Education, Western Australia, 1993; Masters & Forster, 1997).
This paper reports on work in progress which aims to extend teachers' context-specific knowledge of teaching by working in collegial groups to construct individual professional portfolios. In constructing their portfolios,teachers work through a series of classroom-based tasks which are directed towards developing the professional knowledge which is specific to their particular context as they teach school English literacy to speakers of Aboriginal English.
HUN99547
This is the same as HUN99637
HUN99585
SYMPOSIUM 27
State of play: Civics and citizenship research in NSW schools
Presenters: Jane Hunter, Simon Jimenez, and Claire Treadgold, University of Sydney.
The symposium will report on-going research in the area of civics and citizenship education in NSW schools. The research, while independent of each other, is contextually bound in a benchmarking effort in the area of civics and citizenship, across primary and secondary schools. In an effort to elaborate the conceptual base for civics, the applicability of the theory surrounding subject conceptualisation and pedagogy for civics education is discussed. The research also examines teacher perceptions of their role in the preparation of future citizens, and reports practical examples of teacher and student responses to actual teaching in the area of civics and citizenship education.
PAPER 1:
HUN99586
Paper
Preparing future Australian citizens: Primary teachers perceptions of their role
Jane Hunter, University of Sydney
Four teachers at different primary school sites are united in their belief that education in the area of civics and citizenship should lead to societal improvement. However, how that is realised in HSIE lessons at the level of content selection and pedagogical decision making varies considerably. This paper relates research findings from a study that utilises Bernstein's "pedagogic device" as a mechansim to understand the roles teachers believe they play in preparing future citizens for society.
PAPER 2:
JIM99587
Teachers and pedagogy: Conceptions of civics and citizenship education
Simon Jimenez, University of Sydney
This paper will examine the conceptual base for civics and citizenship education and will discuss the potential implications of this on teacher pedagogy. Recounting the recent history of civics and citizenship education and its location within the curriculum, the paper presents elements of Shulman's theory of pedagogical content knowledge, particularly the notion of conceptual understanding of a subject area. It briefly profiles four experienced history teachers working with content in the area of civics and citizenship education, and interprets these efforts with particular focus on the conceptual understanding each teacher brings to their own subject background and to civics and citizenship education.
PAPER 3:
TRE99588
Student and teacher perceptions of pedagogy in the civics classroom
Claire Treadgold, University of Sydney
The focus of this paper will be on the practical application of civics and citizenship education in the classroom. An intensive look will be taken into the classrooms of two secondary teachers in different subject areas dealing with civics and citizenship content. The teachers perceptions of the pedagogy in which they engage will be addressed, with special attention being paid to any differences or similarities arising across these subject areas. In order to provide a clearer picture of how civics and citizenship education is being applied in the classroom, student responses to these pedagogies will also be examined.
HUN99547
HUN99641
Research in physical and health education: Recent trends and future directions
Lisa Hunter, Teresa Carlson, University of Queensland Ross Brooker, Queensland University of Technology
In the Australian context the 1990's have been a decade of change for the Physical and Health education curriculum fields in both schools and teacher education contexts. The end of the decade provides researchers in Physical and Health education with an opportunity to review the nature of the research that has accompanied such changes. This paper contains a synopsis of the research in Physical and Health Education fields in the 1990's through a document analysis of the major physical education and health education conference proceedings and journal articles. The presentation will highlight the research trends that have been evident within the physical education and health education community, identify gaps and ask questions about where our research foci should and could be heading in the future.
IBL99739
A small scale investigation of the effect of explicitly teaching independent reading skills and strategies in L.O.T.E. (German)
Vicki Ible-Rochau, University of South Australia
Shared Reading, an activity where the teacher reads aloud to the class, is the most common form of reading in the primary school L.O.T.E. classroom. Independent reading is often left until high school. In first language acquisition, however, explicit independent reading skills and strategies are introduced to students in their first year at school. Children are provided with modified reading texts, numerous reading activities and are monitored closely by their teachers to assist their learning.
The study reported in this paper explored the effects of employing some of these teaching methods in the L.O.T.E. classroom. A sample group of eight children participated in workshop reading activities specifically focussing on identifying, sharing and developing their independent reading strategies. It was found that the explicit teaching of these independent reading skills and strategies in L.O.T.E. (German) improved children's attitude to reading independently, as well as their ability to use independent reading skills and strategies while reading German text.
ING99386
SYMPOSIUM 15
Teaching standards and performance assessments for highly accomplished teachers
Presenters: Alan Bishop and Barbara Clarke, Monash University/Di Siemon, AAMT Margaret Gill, Brenton Doecke, Monash University Lawrence Ingvarson, Monash University/Jane Wright, ASTA
This year the Australian Research Council funded three year collaborative research projects designed to develop professional standards and performance assessments for English, Mathematics and Science teachers. Each project has been developed in response to national pressures to improve the quality of teaching and the status of the teaching profession; each involves a major partnership with the relevant subject association; each is coordinated at Monash University. But in significant ways each project is different. The primary purpose of this symposium is to introduce each of the projects; their purposes, their research aims and their approaches to the development of standards and performance assessments. The symposium will also invite discussion about the place of this work within wider strategies for educational reform, including improved career paths for teachers, clearer long term goals for professional development of teachers and greater responsibility within the profession for quality assurance.
PAPER 1: BIS99387
Research and development of national professional standards for excellence in teaching mathematics
Alan Bishop and Barbara Clarke Monash University, Di Siemon, AAMT
This is the title of a collaborative ARC/SPIRT project (1999-2001) in mathematics teaching between Monash University Faculty of Education and the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT). The project has two main goals: (1) to determine consensual views on national professional Standards for excellence in teaching mathematics (the 'Standards') and (2) to develop an assessment scheme and protocols for certifying this excellence. The outcomes will include a thoroughly researched system of certification of excellence in mathematics teaching, for use by both teachers and employers. Using the AAMT's system of Teacher Focus Groups the research will investigate the consensual basis for standards within the mathematics teaching profession, validate the developed standards both 'internally' within the profession, and 'externally' with the employers, and evaluate the teacher assessment materials and protocols for applying the standards' criteria.
This contribution to the symposium will outline the procedures being followed and raise some of the key issues being faced. These include: Are the criteria for excellence similar for both Primary and Secondary levels? How can/should the mathematical content field be limited? How can/should student-generated data be used?
PAPER 2:
GIL99389
Paper
Setting standards for English/Literacy teachers: A project for the profession
Margaret Gill and Brenton Doecke, Monash University
There is historically a strong tradition of commitment by the national English/Literacy subject associations to improving the status and quality of English teaching. The first professional policy statement on the teaching of English was produced by the Australian Association for the Teaching of English in 1984. Since that time the profession has responded to successive federal and state government policies designed to raise the standards of literacy and literacy teaching in conjunction with broader national agendas to improve entry levels, career paths and professional development opportunities for all teachers.
This paper outlines the key government policies that influence and shape the work of English/Literacy teachers and describes a research project which aims to develop and validate standards and performance assessments for the profession. We shall review the first year of the project, reporting how the research team is working with teachers to describe the knowledge, skills and values that identify the accomplished English/Literacy teacher.
PAPER 3:
ING99388
Paper
Science teachers are developing their own standards Lawrence Ingvarson, Monash University Jane Wright, ASTA
The ASTA Teaching Standards Project is the latest stage in a process that began back in the early 1990s when ASTA Council first discussed whether the Association should get involved in developing teaching standards. Since those Advanced Skills Teacher days, there has been increasing activity around the development of standards across all states and territories. Until now, most of this work has been done by state government agencies, not teachers' own professional associations, for the purposes of personnel decisions. Most important, these standards and assessments have little capacity to promote professional development.
Things are changing. Dr Kemp the Commonwealth Minister for Education has strongly advocated that teachers should play a stronger role in articulating their own standards and promoting excellence in teaching (1996). And A Class Act, the 1998 report of the Senate Inquiry into the Status of Teachers, recommended that the Commonwealth Government facilitate the development of a national professional teaching standards and registration body to certify teachers who had "attained advanced standing in the profession".
The long aim of the ASTA/Monash Project is to support the development of a national voluntary system to provide professional certification to teachers whose practice has attained high standards set by the profession. This paper outlines the main stages in the project and the approach to developing and researching the standards and the performance assessments.
ING99390
SYMPOSIUM 16
Empowering the teaching profession: The relevance of the national board for professional teaching standards to Australasia
Lawrence Ingvarson, Monash University, John Hattie and Janet Clinton, University of Auckland, Rod Chadbourne, Edith Cowan University, Marie Cameron, Wellington College of Education and Peter Gunn, Naenae Intermediate School
Increasing attention is being given to the development of teaching standards in Australia and New Zealand for a variety of purposes. This symposium focuses on teaching standards developed by teachers' own professional bodies for the purposes of providing advanced certification, as recommended in the 1998 Senate Inquiry report A Class Act. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) in the USA, now in its twelfth year, has developed, and extensively researched, a system of performance standards and assessments for the certification of highly accomplished teachers. Increasing numbers of employers recognise that National Board certification is a powerful vehicle for professional development and a guarantee of a teacher's expertise, and pay accordingly. Each paper in this symposium examines the potential relevance of a certification process like that of the National Board for Australasia.
PAPER 1: ING99391
How can a national certification system help to empower the teaching profession?
Lawrence Ingvarson, Monash University
This paper outlines the nature of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and reviews the research and development work it has done on the development of teaching standards and innovative methods for assessing teacher performance over the past twelve years. It also reviews research on the effects of the National Board certification process on teachers'; their professional development, their self-esteem, and their post-certification professional lives. The concluding section of the paper examines what the experience gained from establishing a national professional certification body for teachers in the US may have to offer Australasia.
PAPER 2: HAT99392
Validating models of teaching in Australasia
John Hattie and Janet Clinton, University of Auckland
To come
PAPER 3:
CHA99393
Why re-invent the wheel? An Australian critique of the value and portability of two sets of NBPTS standards
Rod Chadbourne, Edith Cowan University
This paper discusses two studies of Australian teachers' perspectives on the US National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. One study, conducted in 1997, focuses on the NBPTS standards for English teaching. The other, conducted in 1998, focuses on the NBPTS standards for early childhood teaching. Both studies involved workshopping the US standards for 3-4 four full days (a fortnight apart) with groups of 10-15 Western Australian teachers who by reputation or position were regarded as highly accomplished. In each case, an attempt was made to find out: what sense the teachers made of the US standards; whether the teachers could exemplify from their own teaching what the US standards mean; how valid and powerful the teachers considered the US standards to be; the extent to which the US standards are compatible with our language, educational philosophy and culture; whether Australia needs the equivalent of the US standards; and if so, do we need to invest the same amount of time, money and effort as the Americans or can we start with their work, build on it and try to improve it.
PAPER 4: CAM99760
The potential for using the NBPTS standards and portfolios in professional teaching degrees
Marie Cameron, Wellington College of Education and Peter Gunn, Naenae Intermediate School
The Wellington College of Education has been one of a number of New Zealand Teacher Education institutions that have initiated new degree qualifications in recent years. The opportunity for existing teachers to upgrade their qualifications from Diplomas in Teaching to degree status has seen a wide range of approaches. Since 1998 the Wellington College of Education has been teaching an outcomes based, three year, professionally coherent degree based upon the NBPST standards. Teachers wishing to upgrade to this degree are required to achieve the same "outputs" as preservice graduates. They enroll for key course work from the degree, as well as for a Professional Practice portfolio, which allows them to gain academic recognition for the demonstration of their professional knowledge and skills relevant to the NBPTS outcomes. The use of portfolios appears to be a potentially powerful tool in the assessment of teachers' performance, and the use of the NBPTS standards dovetails well with this approach. Highly accomplished teachers and school leaders can potentially demonstrate not only the standards of performance for advanced certification, but can also use their evidence to satisfy nationally regulated performance standards. In this presentation we outline experiences from the first year of trialling professional standards for enhanced qualification requirements and discuss the use of NBPTS and other standards in this process.
ING99396
Relations between policy and practice in Victorian state schools
Lawrence Ingvarson, Jan Mongan, Anne Credlin, Glen Garden and Irene Elliott, Monash University
Each paper in this symposium takes one aspect of policy in Victoria's Schools of the Future Program and examines the nature of its interpretation and implementation at school and individual teacher levels. Policies include the Curriculum and Standards Framework, the Professional Recognition Program and the Performance Management Program for School principals.
PAPER 1:
MON99397
Paper
Managing performance: a review of the performance management program for principals in Victorian state schools
Jan Mongan, Monash University
This research aims to link the theory of performance management and performance-related pay with practice, by relating the findings from literature with the practice in the Victorian Department of Education. It attempts to determine the practical considerations required to successfully implement performance management for middle managers in a large human service organisation.
Literature indicates a number of factors deemed necessary to ensure that performance management is successful in achieving its aims and is acceptable to participants. These include the effect of the performance management process on motivation, individual and organisational improvement, integrated planning and changes to the culture of the workplace. Also significant are the ways in which performance management is linked to the strategies and objectives of the larger organisation, its culture and values and the extent to which it leads to a climate focused on quality, accountability and improved performance. The study documents the development of the Performance Management Program used by the Department of Education to assess the performance of school principals. The major aim has been to develop an enhanced understanding of the conditions that lead to effective performance management of middle managers and to clarify the conditions under which performance management is most likely to succeed. To achieve this, the study has focused on principals' perceptions of the current Department of Education Performance Management Program and analysed these perceptions in light of the recommendations from literature and the experiences of other organisations.
PAPER 2: CRE99398
Paper
The appraisal of teacher performance - a Victorian perspective
Anne Credlin, Monash University
This study focuses on the annual review process which is an integral part of the Professional Recognition Program in Victorian State Schools. It concentrates on the effectiveness of the process being implemented in each of four schools, as it is perceived by the participants - Principals and teachers. The review process is examined in four dimensions: its effectiveness as a means of determining suitability for promotion or a salary increment its effectiveness as a means of determining or meeting professional development requirements + its effect on classroom practice, and on the morale of the teaching staff its context - the micropolitical climate of the school - to what extent, if any, it influences the process.
Principals and teachers from four schools were interviewed, three of the schools being government secondary colleges, in which the process is a mandatory requirement, and a relatively small, non-government school which had introduced and piloted an appraisal process in response to a directive from its governing Council. An analysis of the data was undertaken using QSR NUD-IST 4. The evidence points to factors such as the allocation of time and resources to the implementation of a review program; the climate in which it is introduced; and the application of information gained by both teachers and school administrators, as being relevant to the participants' perceptions of the effectiveness of the PRP Review program in their respective schools.
PAPER 3:
GAR99399
Paper
Standards and diversity in a curriculum framework
Glen Garden, Monash University
Teachers stand at the "bottom" of the educational policy process. Policy texts, such as the Victorian Curriculum and Standards Framework (CSF), are addressed to teachers with the intention of moving their practice in directions suggested. Research on change/innovation and implementation in education has shown a high level of failure of change, innovation, and reform projects. Conjecture about the reasons for failure ranges from deficiencies in the teachers, through problems with the innovations per se, to factors in the design of the implementation process. Teachers of Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) in a rural district of Victoria were interviewed in an attempt to capture a fine-grained representation of the way a state policy like the CSF is actually enacted. There are numerous perspectives for viewing such a phenomenon such as this, but the seven chose for framing the conclusions were the political, technological, cultural, rational, organisational, symbolic, and normative. As a result, seven diverse approaches to implementing policy were identified (some by a concept and others by association with a group): Entitlement, Very good apples, Professional standards, Height over width, Integration/multi-stranding, Discrete disciplines, On-balance judges, and strategists. The main implication drawn from the research is that while the success of change/innovation and implementation policies are heavily dependent upon teacher learning, the policies have to have clarity, coherence, and comprehensiveness before professional development activities can be effective.
PAPER 4:
ELL99400
Paper
Changes in the primary school curriculum: what happens to "...attitudes, values and personal qualities..."?
Irene Elliott, Monash University
This study followed a group of Victorian primary teachers working in the same school and in the same Grade 3/4 area, as they planned and taught a unit of work based on the Victorian Curriculum and Standards Framework (CSF). The unit was based on the CSF Learning Outcome: "Illustrate the linkages between rights and responsibilities for members of a community." Data was gathered on teachers' collegial planning of the unit, their individual planning, and the manner in which they actually presented this unit of work in their classrooms. The Victorian CSF covers all the Key Learning Areas in the curriculum. The progress of all state school students' in the these Key Learning Areas must be assessed and evaluated, some by the use of statewide standardised testing procedures. However, goals related to "...attitudes, values and personal attributes..." have not been specified in the CSF, even though they are important aims for teachers. Under the CSF, these are seen as context dependent and thus the responsibility of individual schools and teachers. Teachers interpret Learning Outcomes in different ways. Using Weick and McDaniel's (1993) model of professional organisations, this study examines the nature of collegial discussion on teachers' interpretation of "non-routine" CSF information and its relation to classroom practice. Policy implications and recommendations are raised. The study highlights once more the need to allocate time for collegial planning. Collegial planning with fellow professionals is essential if teachers are to construct professional rather than personal interpretations of the "attitudes, values and personal attributes" associated with such learning outcomes
ING99433
Paper
Developing professionally: The role of teacher associations in the professional development of teachers.
Les Mullins and Lawrence Ingvarson, Monash University
This paper reports on a study of five subject associations in Victoria.The central question was, "To what extent are subject professional communities?" We wanted to know more about the significance of 'subject associations' in teachers' work life, in their professional development, and in their aspirations to improve their status as members of a profession To address this question, a conceptual framework was derived from an extensive review of relevant literature. This literature led us to focus on the nature of "professional community", membership of which was a defining characteristic of professionals according to this literature.This led to the development of an eight-element 'framework' with which to examine these five case studies.It was also used to focus the research questions and data gathering methods. Case studies were conducted on each of the five subject associations and two surveys of teachers (450 in total) - those who were members and those who were not. The data was analysed using the eight elements of the framework for professional community
IOL99442
IRV99355
Individual differences in processing behaviours of three tertiary students engaged in music composition.
Ian Irvine, Robert Cantwell and Nerryl Jeanneret, University of Newcastle
Learning to compose music has been described as a complex activity that involves strategic processing. This paper seeks to present a theoretical model for the analysis of the process of musical composition that is drawn from the research literature devoted to self-regulated learning. To provide support for this model, three case studies of tertiary students involved in a composing task are presented. The analysis traces distinct and individual differences in attentional focus as goals of the task are progressively set, monitored, evaluated and updated. The analysis suggests that quality of compositional outcomes may be accounted for in the different processing patterns of the participants.
IRW99512
Paper
Training partnerships and the fall and slide of the Asian economies
Jim Irwin and Kate Lawson, Box Hill TAFE
During the 1990's there has been a strong drive for TAFE's to provide increasing amounts of training within the workplace context. In many cases the training has been provided offshore.
Box Hill Institute of TAFE (and specifically the Centre for Hospitality and Tourism Studies - CHATS) has built a training partnership with Sheraton Hotels. The purpose of the partnership was to support Sheraton Hotels in developing standards and procedures that would work for them and be sustainable.
The purpose of this paper will be to present on:
- how the partnership developed
- the challenges in developing a 'training culture' within the organisation to ensure that ongoing training is possible; and
- the impact of the Asian economic crash on offshore training.
ISD99477
Paper
"'Switch bitches' and system glitches: How do computers change the work of school office girls?.
Lindy Isdale, Central Queensland University
The introduction of a new computerised School Management System (SMS) into Central Queensland school administrations in 1996 is Queensland's bid to bring school administrative work-systems into closer accord with those of other modern organisations intent on securing market share in a new deregulated, global economy. Powerful global networks of discourses linking information technologies, efficient and accountable administrations and the economy positions school administrative work as central to the attainment of more efficient and accountable schools. As a new, hi-tech innovation involving networked computers SMS certainly requires office workers to perform work in different ways. But the new forms of work produced through SMS cannot be explained as policy or 'system' mandates. Nor can they be understood as simply global phenomena grafted onto local sites. Drawing on a larger study of SMS, conducted in 1996, in two Central Queensland schools, this paper reports on the processes of workplace innovation as it occurred in the initial stages of the introduction of SMS. Using Latour's Actor Network Theory (ANT) to map the activities of the early SMS school networks, the study shows changing work as the production of new 'agreements' between workers and technologies to perform work in certain ways. The study offers educational workers a new way to understand computerised work as a constant and on-going struggle between human and non-human actors, not a linear process troubled by a 'couple of glitches'. It also shows that it is the work of the school office workers that ensures SMS's survival as a viable and durable system of school administration. The significance of the study is obvious at a time when the emerging information economy is a driving force behind workplace innovation.
JAR99227
Paper
Commitment and compliance: Curious bedfellows in teacher collaboration.
Lucy Jarzabkowski,University of Canberra
Teacher collegiality has been used rhetorically to support a wide range of sometimes contradictory initiatives, from teacher development to school effectiveness, from a panacea for an aging teaching force to a well spring of innovation. There is also considerable scepticism about the ways in which collegiality can be used on co-opt teachers or control their work. Hargreaves (1994) has written extensively about a culture he describes as "contrived collegiality". His notion that contrived collegiality exists as a state in opposition to a culture of collaboration is interesting. However, this paper argues that it is not as simple as that in reality. Intensive case study research suggests that it is possible to have elements of both these states working side by side in one school. The case study which underlies the paper finds that the definitions of collegiality in the literature are much too simple.
The data reveal that in a normal, middle sized primary school characteristics of both contrived collegiality and collaborative culture coexist. Much of the collaborative work is spontaneous and voluntary, development oriented, and pervades both time and space. However, there are other parts of collaborative work which are more regulated or contrived by principals. For themselves, most teachers in the school are quite comfortable with this. The school's leaders are also comfortable with the knowledge that all teachers do not collaborate to the same extent, and feel that staff morale and student learning do not suffer because of this.Collegial consonance is not destroyed by a degree of either isolation or forced collaboration. Healthy staff relationships may be the glue of the collegial bond.
JAS99703
Paper
A global issue and local response: the role of experienced classroom teachers in creating collaborative school cultures
Anne Jasman and Gary Martin, Murdoch University
The major thrust for school improvement has in recent years focussed on the development of teachers and the creation of collaborative cultures as a means of improving the quality of student outcomes. The recognition of highly accomplished teachers within Western Australia was based not only on their classroom expertise but also teachers demonstrating a role beyond the classroom. The type of leadership model envisioned was one in which teachers work collaboratively with their colleagues on professional activities such as curriculum development, professional development and school-based research in an endeavour to enhance the school's capacity to respond to student learning needs. A questionnaire survey of teachers selected to undertake this role was conducted one year after their appointment. The research reported here has focussed on the processes of role negotiation, the agreed role and any perceived outcomes of this negotiated role for the improvement of student outcomes.
Preliminary indications are that some teachers undertake a range of activities broadly in line with the leadership model envisaged. In other cases, constraints operated to limit teachers in their capacity to develop a suitable role and reduced their sense of efficacy. Factors such as the prevailing culture, leadership and organisation of the school contributed to the 'success' or otherwise of the role negotiation and implementation. These results are discussed with reference to the current thrust to create learning communities that are premised on successful collaboration.
JEF99098
Paper
Time for A New Vision
Anne L. Jefferson, University of Ottawa
The one educational reform that appears to generate agreement, in terms of its need, is the incorporation of technology into the learning environment. This agreement, however, has not meant the removal of conflict. This paper adopts the position that technology is a means for the encouragement and facilitation of reform in the structure of the education system, the curriculum, teachers' development, and student learning. As such, the matter is of primary importance and requires priority in policy formulation and funding. Consequently, the knowledge areas that must be given consideration with regards to the policy issue of technology and improved student achievement are student learning, teacher development, teacher education at the tertiary level, and funding. Each of these four knowledge areas is discussed in a manner to suggest to the audience that although much evidence has been presented about the potential of technology to enhance learning in schools, teachers must remain central to the strategies associated with government policy. This may mean a real departure from much of the current modes of professional training and development of teachers.Furthermore, educational organizations have to overcome the problem of meeting a substantial front-end capital cost. The traditional instrument of choice does not match the limited life expectancy of technology very well.
JES99128
Paper
New Zealand teacher unions, still here after all the reforms
Joce Jesson,,Auckland College of Education
The structural reforms in New Zealand can be seen as a direct attempt to remove the unions from any policy role in the state. This paper argues that the attempt to actively remove the teacher unions from any involvement in education policy was behind much of the educational reforms.
In spite of a highly charged media campiagn and the active anti-unionsim of the industrial legislation - the Employment Contracts Act, teachers are still positioned as having an important voice through their union. The unions have faced a delicate balancing act as they move strategically between various definitions of being union and a profession, between accomodation and resistance, and between militant and compliant. The New Zealand Teacher Registration Board's strategic plan and various other policy initiatives pointed up the importance for the state of actively involving teachers in establishing a teaching code of ethics, so revealing the political possibility that teacher unions structurally hold.
JES99130
Paper
Reflection for professional growth: an organisational strategy for a teacher education degree programme
D. Hill, J.Jesson, S.Windross, L.Grudnoff,Auckland College of Education
Reflection is a central notion in the Auckland College of Education's Bachelor of Education (Teaching) degree. It has the highest profile in the degree's unifying professional inquiry and practice strand. In this strand student teachers are supported in achieving a personal synthesis of their learning and experiences across the qualification. The aim is to use metacognitive processes to maximise the professional growth and performance of each individual student teacher.
In support of this goal a decision was made in 1998 to make reflection conscious for lecturing staff. A co- ordinator of reflective practice was appointed and lecturing staff in Teacher Education Centres of Learning (faculties) became engaged in a dialogic staff development process.
This paper documents both this process and the questions that emerged for the organisation.
JIM99587
JOH99135
Paper
MLC at MLC-Mapping learning communities at Methodist Ladies College
Evelyn Johnson, Methodist Ladies College
Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne enjoys a reputation for teaching excellence through innovation. We suggest that an important reason for our capacity for innovation lies in our collaborative research endeavours. This symposium identifies the ways in which we seek to straddle the link between theory and practice. For instance Methodist Ladies College provides significant support for teachers who conduct research into practice in their own classrooms addition to any upgrading of academic qualifications. We have developed a research program by devising a system of Learning Projects supervised by a Learning Network under the auspices of a Centre for Learning, Research and Professional Development. This we would argue goes beyond school-based research or partnerships between schools and researchers (Loughran and Northfield 1997). Instead in our view it characterises a school which researches its own learning communities.
In this symposium teachers detail what it means to do research at Methodist Ladies College. We will discuss our praxis by demonstrating how we engage with research and how we link it to teaching innovation. Classroom teachers will share the processes and products involved in their research projects. Opportunities for substantial interaction will be encouraged.
Methodist Ladies' College is one of Australia's most respected and innovative schools. Our underlying philosophy is to empower students to take charge of their learning, resulting in confident young women who create their own future. Established in 1882 and located in Melbourne, the College is a day and boarding school for 2200 students from Pre-School to Year 12. MLC is a school of the Uniting Church in Australia.
PAPER 1:
GIN99816
Are questions as important as answers?
Jenny Ginsberg, Methodist Ladies College
As a thinker and learner, a lifelong fascination with questions led me to the topic for the learning project I undertook last year. I asked my students from my two Year 7 classes to conduct an oral history interview with someone they knew well.
In Oral History the focus is on ordinary men and women going about their daily livews. The life stories which unfold are unique and at the same time universal. These stories provide a reflection of history through the personal experiences of the people interviewed.
I read extensively in the literature of Oral History, being influenced by the writings of Patton, Douglas and Lowenstein among others in my approach.
In my methodology many stories were used to engage student interest, I role played many interviews, practised the mechanics of trouble free taping, modelled effective interviewing techniques and discussed the many types of possible questions.
Data collection was established through the writing of individual journals, lengthy written responses, the taped interviews and an evaluation by independent observers. They taped interviews with 12 randomly selected students.
Students found that questions need preparation, need patience, require intent listening, are very important, satisfying and powerful, some are more fruitful than others, and there are many types of questions.
Through the oral history interview, students gained a sense of the historical context which shaped the life of their interviewee. Other intended and achieved outcomes were a deeper understanding and appreciation of history and an awareness of being part of an historical discourse, nongender specific and inclusive of ordinary people, as well as research and interviewing skills.
PAPER 2:
HOU99817
The relationship between attitudes to computing and computer usage: An investigation among female VCE Psychology students
Gerard Houlihan, Methodist Ladies' College
The relationship between attitudes to computing and usage of computer utilities was explored among a sample of 104 female senior secondary school students in Australia. Subjects who reported higher use in computer mediated communication (email, internet, chat) indicated a more positive attitude towards computers there was no correlation with utilities such as word processing. There are necessary implications for the development of future attitude indices, particularly in determining the behavioural component.
PAPER 3:
CAR99818
Information literacy in action
Felicity Carroll, Methodist Ladies College
Information Literacy in Action was a learning network project undertaken during 1997 and 1998. It provided the opportunity to undertake in-depth research into the information literacy dilemmas facing students at MLC. The project took the form of collaborative research which involved MLC's teacher librarians, subject teachers and Dr ross Todd, Department Head of Information Studies, University of Technology, Sydney.
Essentially the project aimed to identify the information literacy learning dilemmas evidenbt within selected classes, and to address these dilemmas thereby improving students' information handling skills. It was also an opportunity for staff to take risks by instigating and then evaluating change within their curriculum. The Learning Network provided the support staff needed to do this.
The research began with seven projects, each project involving a subject teacher and two teacher librarians. All projects were conducted using the action research model. A conscious decision was made to vary both the subjects and year levels targeted in order to facilitate the gathering of data from students in years 8 to 11 from both the sciences and humanities. Three of the seven projects ran to completion in 1998.
The three projects were a natural disasters unit within Year 8 Geography, Science Journalism within Year 10 Science and Families in a Changing Environment within VCE Human Development.
PAPER 4:
BEE99819
Tiddeman House Learning Project: Boardering on the millennium
Cynthia Beer, Methodist Ladies College
Tiddeman House is a home for students from all parts of the world. The majority of our boarders are in the senior years however we do take students from Year 7 to Year 12. The Boarding House staff have tertiary qualifications and are qualified teachers who maintain a professional approach to the learning environment.
In 1998 we took part in the learning network by submitting a learning project to monitor student learning at Tiddeman. Our aim is to empower our students to further take control of their learning and to fully utilise the resources available in the College. In particular there is a new focus on learning that allowa the tutors in the boarding house to play a significant part in monitoring, tutoring and helping our boarders and by also maintaining close contact with the day school about their progress. The learning project is a very valuable research opportunity to assess what we are doing and to find out how best to meet the needs of our boarders. Students, teachers and parents expect the highest achievement possible and we have a moral obligation to support and enhance the opportunity of each student.
The Tiddeman House Learning Project is helping us provide the best learning environment possible for young people coping away from home and with many living and studying in a different culture. On an international level we need to constantly strive to meet the needs of all students who are seeking an education that will allow them to be competitive globally and enter a university of their choice. "Boardering on the millennium" opens the way.
JOH99248
Paper
Professional development through shared adventure
Richard Johnson, Deakin University
This paper comes from a collaborative, school based case study that undertook to answer the question: How can computers be used to promote metacognition in primary school students? From 1992 to 1994 I worked with a teacher and her primary school students in a room with computer equipment and facilities. The students used the computers to develop curriculum based projects. The teacher and I worked collaboratively to promote metacognition through our teaching strategies. We discussed our observations, reflected on our practice and acted on our findings in order to promote metacognition through the use of computers. The case study did not focus on technology.The beginning point was the use of the computer as a tool in the learning env