Shaping science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum in Australian schools: An ecological systems analysis
- Authors: Falloon, Garry , Powling, Markus , Fraser, Sharon , Hatisaru, Vesife
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: The Australian journal of education Vol. 66, no. 2 (2022), p. 171-195
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- Description: Improving young people's engagement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is being promoted worldwide as a means of addressing projected shortfalls in expertise needed to further nations' economic, social and environmental goals. Responding to this, schools are reforming traditional discipline-based curricula into interdisciplinary approaches based on problem and project-based designs, to make STEM learning more relevant and meaningful for students. This study drew on a dataset of 449 Australian principal and teacher interviews, to identify factors influencing STEM curriculum in their schools. It utilised Ecological Systems Theory to build understanding relating to the influence of activities and outputs originating at macro, exo and meso system levels, on STEM curriculum and practices in classrooms. Results demonstrated how many innovative schools were able to successfully leverage community, business and national resources to enhance their STEM curriculum, while others struggled due to limitations imposed by geographic or socio-economic factors, or limited access to resources, expertise or advice. Central to achieving this was the powerful influence of principals' and teachers' 'proximal processes and developmental assets' in establishing effective and engaging interdisciplinary STEM curricula, despite constraints imposed by, at best, ambiguous national and state curriculum and policies, rigid assessment regimes and compliance-focused reporting requirements.
STEM in the Making? Investigating STEM Learning in Junior School Makerspaces
- Authors: Falloon, Garry , Forbes, Anne , Stevenson, Michael , Bower, Matt , Hatzigianni, Maria
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Research in science education (Australasian Science Education Research Association) Vol. 52, no. 2 (2022), p. 511-537
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- Description: Makerspaces are recent additions to schools and have been promoted as a means of developing STEM knowledge and skills. According to literature, the practical nature of making supports deeper engagement with STEM concepts and enhances development of STEM capabilities such as creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration. However, to date, limited empirical work has been completed investigating STEM learning in school makerspaces. This article reports outcomes from a study of 24 classroom makerspaces, where 5-8-year olds used 3D printing technology to design and develop artefacts responding to different problems, needs and opportunities. Findings were mixed, with evidence supporting makerspaces as effective for STEM skill and disposition development but more limited in their capacity to build STEM knowledge, unless this was explicitly identified and targeted by teachers. This paper questions assumptions about makerspaces as implicitly effective for STEM knowledge-building, arguing that teachers must specifically target conceptual outcomes in planning and teaching if makerspaces are to be effective for this purpose. Also, findings suggest the need to rethink how makerspaces contribute to holistic STEM literacy development, moving beyond current perspectives focused on learning about STEM, to one where makerspaces are viewed as epistemic environments beneficial to knowledge-building, of STEM. Findings will be of value to educators considering makerspaces as a component of STEM curriculum and infrastructure development. [Author abstract]
Investing in sustainable and resilient rural social space: Lessons for teacher education
- Authors: White, Simone , Lock, Graeme , Hastings, Wendy , Cooper, Maxine , Reid, Jo-Anne , Green, Bill
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian and International Journal of Rural Education Vol. 31, no. 2 (2021), p. 46-55
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- Description: Attracting and retaining effective education leaders and teaching staff for regional, rural and remote schools in Australia is a major sustainability and quality issue facing every State and Territory. It is also a major concern in pre-service teacher education, particularly for those universities which have a commitment to rural and regional areas.
Making #blacklivesmatter in universities: a viewpoint on social policy education
- Authors: Bennett, Bindi , Ravulo, Jioji , Ife, Jim , Gates, Trevor
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International journal of sociology and social policy Vol. 41, no. 11/12 (2021), p. 1257-1263
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- Description: Purpose The purpose of this viewpoint article is to consider the #BlackLivesMatter movement within the Aboriginal Australian struggle for equality, sovereignty and human rights. Indigenous sovereignty has been threatened throughout Australia's history of colonization. We provide a viewpoint and recommendations for social policy education and practice.Design/methodology/approach. We provide commentary and interpretation based upon the lived experience of Black, Indigenous and Other People of Color (BIPOC) co-authors, co-authors who are Allies, extant literature and practice wisdom as social policy educators. FindingsUniversities are sources of knowledge production, transmission and consumption within society. We provide critical recommendations for what social policy education within universities can address human rights and the #BlackLivesMatter movement.Originality/valueCulturally responsive inclusion for BIPOC has only just begun in Australia and globally within the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. This paper adds critical conversation and recommendations for what social policy programs might do better to achieve universities' teaching and learning missions.
Policies and practices of early childhood education and care during the COVID-19 pandemic: Perspectives from five countries
- Authors: Visnjic-Jevtic, Adrijana , Varga Nagy, Anikó , Ozturk, Gulsah , Şahin-Sak, İkbal , Toran, Mehmet , Sánchez-Pérez, Noelia
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Childhood, Education & Society Vol. 2, no. 2 (2021), p. 200-216
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- Description: The COVID-19 pandemic, which affects all areas of life, has also affected children in need of education and care. It is of great importance to develop policies that take into account the best interests of children in this process. In this review article, the policies developed for early childhood education and care during the pandemic period in five countries (Australia, Croatia, Hungary, Spain, and Turkey), how they are implemented, the problems that arose, and the solutions produced are discussed. As a result, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that we need to focus on eliminating the educational inequalities, set policies for the welfare of children on foundations that are more realistic, rebuild teacher training, and improve the welfare of families. Priorizating the best interests of the child in the policies to be developed and building the social ecology on justice will ease overcoming the crises that will be faced.
Creating a culturally safe space when teaching aboriginal content in social work: A scoping review
- Authors: Fernando, Terrina , Bennett, Bindi
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australian social work Vol. 72, no. 1 (2019), p. 47-61
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- Description: Teaching Aboriginal content in social work education presents risks of retraumatisation for students. There are international calls for a trauma-informed teaching model that creates cultural safety in the classroom. This study aimed to develop a trauma-informed model for social work education by reviewing the literature on cultural safety for Aboriginal peoples. This model incorporates key aspects of ensuring Aboriginal cultural safety: de-colonise social work education collaborative partnerships build relationships critical reflection develop cultural courage and yarning and story-telling. It provides a valuable framework for creating a more equitable teaching and learning environment that also ensures the essential academic content is covered. IMPLICATIONS Trauma underlies the historical, contemporary and cultural narratives of Aboriginal peoples. Students engaging in Aboriginal content that is traumatic can mean connecting with trauma that has occurred in their own lives. Trauma-informed teaching and learning will ensure that educators create culturally safe spaces that enable students to engage well with content. The adoption of the framework proposed in this paper may lead to the creation of a culturally safe space for teaching and learning in social work education.
A 3D approach to first year English education
- Authors: Zeegers, Margaret
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Quality Assurance in Education Vol. 21, no. 1 (2013), p. 54-69
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- Description: Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the suggestive possibilities of an approach to undergraduate English teacher education that the author has called the 3D Approach - Develop professional knowledge, Display professional knowledge, Disseminate professional knowledge - in relation to a number of groups of first year pre-service teachers (PSTs) engaging the teaching and learning materials of their English education course. Design/methodology/approach: The paper examines ways in which this approach has been assessed by the PSTs themselves, constructing this as an expression of their lived experience as PSTs. The author draws on Vygotsky's concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, initiates a systematic and orchestrated program of explicit scaffolding of first year PST learning and draws on University-generated student assessment of their courses, focus groups and individual interviews to investigate ways in which the 3D approach may be considered as enhancing first year PST learning. Findings: PSTs' own informed evaluations of their own developing knowledge have made visible the teaching and learning that they have engaged and articulated. What the author outlines in this paper is not a "Eureka" moment for first year PSTs, but it is the result of careful scholarly considerations of what careful scholarly considerations by first years in Education courses may engage. For this cohort of PSTs, and for the author, it is a particular form of engagement with pedagogy. It is a pedagogy for teachers, part of active engagement on the part of the teacher and the learner, producing knowledge together. Research limitations/implications: Lack of generalisability from case study research may be considered as a limitation, but the author would argue that it is the details thrown up for careful examination in a case study which may serve to inform professional discussion and debate. Practical implications: Negative press of inadequate teachers emerging from universities, with their specious claims will not progress reasoned discussion; research on how the PSTs are themselves taught and how they develop as professionals will. PSTs' own informed evaluations of their own developing knowledge will go some way towards enabling this to happen. This sort of research opens up possibilities for starting with the right sort of questions, a shift from asking the wrong sort of questions, which the author would argue is that sort on which the media are basing their opinion pieces. Social implications: Continuing public discussions, usually conducted in and by the media, about teacher quality, particularly as this tends to be tied to notions of teacher pay, indicates a wider social concern about the need for quality teachers. This sort of social concern is also a major concern for teacher educators, and is to be addressed as such. This paper addresses some of those concerns. Originality/value: The paper engages issues about teacher education raised publicly in the media and ties these to the more private domain of university practice in a given teacher education course. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Becoming a teacher educator : Voices of beginning teacher educators
- Authors: Swennen, Anja , Klink, Marcel , Shagrir, Leah , Cooper, Maxine
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Becoming a teacher educator Chapter p. 91-102
- Full Text: false
- Description: 2003008005
Globalization and the reshaping of teacher professional culture : Do we train competent technicians or informed players in the policy process?
- Authors: Angus, Lawrence
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Handbook of Teacher Education: Globalization, Standards and Professionalism in Times of Change Chapter 47 p. 141-156
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- Description: This book provides an international review of the current state of teacher education, with chapters from an international group of teacher educators. It focuses on major issues that are confronting teacher educators now and in the next decade. These include the impact of globalization on the profession of teaching, and how teacher education must deal with changing accountability requirements from governments and establish a set of minimum standards acceptable to enable a person to teach. The work also considers aspects of the three major phases of teacher education: the period prior to commencing in the profession, successful induction into the profession, and the ongoing professional development of teachers. Finally, it identifies ways in which new technologies can be used to improve the training and ongoing development of teachers. Cases from different countries are used to provide a rich base of data to help us understand how the profession is moving onwards.
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003002102
You don’t have other teachers to bounce ideas off
- Authors: Tytler, Russell , Mousley, Judith , Tobias, Steve , MacMillan, Agnes , Marks, Genee
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Science, ICT and Mathematics Education in Rural and Regional Australia: State and Territory Case Studies Chapter p. 44-64
- Full Text: false
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- Description: B1
- Description: 2003002390
Discursive influences on clinical teaching in Australian undergraduate nursing programs
- Authors: McKenna, Lisa , Wellard, Sally
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Nurse Education Today Vol. 24, no. 3 (2004), p. 229-235
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- Description: Clinical teaching is a vital, yet multidimensional component of Australian undergraduate nursing courses. Unlike other parts of curricula, clinical teaching relies on the both higher education and health care sectors to meet prescribed goals and for effective student learning to occur. As such it is influenced by discourses from within both education and health. Whilst there is considerable literature related to undergraduate nursing clinical teaching; it mainly deals with practical aspects such as effectiveness of clinical teaching or discussions of models employed. Only a small pool of literature exists that discusses the construction of clinical teaching including the factors that have influenced the development of practices both in the past and present. Using the work of Foucault, this paper examines dominant and competing discourses influencing clinical teaching through their constructions within the literature. These are discourses of academia, nursing, and economics. The discussion situates these discourses and discusses how some of the resultant issues surrounding clinical education remain largely unresolved. Crown Copyright © 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003000838
Teaching, researching and evaluating : Action research as an approach to evaluation
- Authors: Noone, Lynne , Cartwright, Patricia
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Academic Skills Advising: Evaluating for Program Improvement and Accountability Chapter 11 p. 5-28
- Full Text: false
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- Description: B1
- Description: 2003000183