Embracing diversity : empowering preservice teachers for teaching gifted and talented students

This study investigated preservice teachers’ perceptions for teaching and sustaining gifted and talented students while developing, modifying and implementing activities to cater for the diverse learner. Participants were surveyed at the end of a gifted and talented education program on their perceptions to differentiate the curriculum for meeting the needs of the student (n=22). SPSS data analysis with the five-part Likert scale indicated these preservice teachers agreed or strongly agreed they had developed skills in curriculum planning (91%) with well-designed activities (96%), and lesson preparation skills (96%). They also claimed they were enthusiastic for teaching (91%) and understanding of school practices and policies (96%). However, 46% agreed they had knowledge of syllabus documents with 50% claiming an ability to provide written feedback on student’s learning. Furthermore, nearly two-thirds suggested they had educational language from the syllabus and effective student management strategies. Preservice teachers require more direction on how to cater for diversity and begin creating sustainable societies by building knowledge from direct GAT experiences. Designing diagnostic surveys associated with university coursework can be used to determine further development for specific preservice teacher development in GAT education. Preservice teachers need to create opportunities for students to realise their potential by involving cognitive challenges through a differentiated curriculum. Differentiation requires modification of four primary areas of curriculum development (Maker, 1975) content (what we teach), process (how we teach), product (what we expect the students to do or show) and learning environment (where we teach/our class culture). Ashman and Elkins (2009) and Glasson (2008) emphasise the need for preservice teachers, teachers and other professionals to be able to identify what gifted and talented (GAT) students know and how they learn in relation to effective teaching. Glasson (2008) recommends that educators keep up to date with practices in pedagogy, support, monitoring and profiling of GAT students to create an environment conducive to achieving. Oral feedback is one method to communicate to learners about their progress but has advantages and disadvantages for some students. Oral feedback provides immediate information to the student on progress and performance (Ashman & Elkins, 2009). However, preservice teachers must have clear understandings of key concepts to assist the GAT student. Implementing teaching strategies to engage innovate and extend students is valuable to the preservice teacher in focusing on GAT student learning in the classroom (Killen, 2007). Practical teaching strategies (Harris & Hemming, 2008; Tomlinson et al., 1994) facilitate diverse ways for assisting GAT students to achieve learning outcomes. Such strategies include activities to enhance creativity, co-operative learning and problem-solving activities (Chessman, 2005; NSW Department of Education and Training, 2004; Taylor & Milton, 2006) for GAT students to develop a sense of identity, belonging and self esteem towards becoming an autonomous learner. Preservice teachers need to understand that GAT students learn in a different way and therefore should be assessed differently. Assessment can be through diverse options to demonstrate the student’s competence, demonstrate their understanding of the material in a way that highlights their natural abilities (Glasson, 2008; Mack, 2008). Preservice teachers often are unprepared to assess students understanding but this may be overcome with teacher education training promoting effective communication and collaboration in the classroom, including the provision of a variety of assessment strategies to improve teaching and learning (Callahan et al., 2003; Tomlinson et al., 1994). It is also critical that preservice teachers have enthusiasm for teaching to demonstrate inclusion, involvement and the excitement to communicate to GAT students in the learning process (Baum, 2002). Evaluating and reflecting on teaching practices must be part of a preservice teacher’s repertoire for GAT education. Evaluating teaching practices can assist to further enhance student learning (Mayer, 2008). Evaluation gauges the success or otherwise of specific activities and teaching in general (Mayer, 2008), and ensures that preservice teachers and teachers are well prepared and maintain their commitment to their students and the community. Long and Harris (1999) advocate that reflective practices assist teachers in creating improvements in educational practices. Reflective practices help preservice teachers and teachers to improve their ability to pursue improved learning outcomes and professional growth (Long & Harris, 1999). Context This study is set at a small regional campus of a large university in Queensland. As a way to address departmental policies and the need to prepare preservice teachers for engaging a diverse range of learners (see Queensland College of Teachers, Professional Standards for Teachers, 2006), preservice teachers at this campus completed four elective units within their Bachelor of Education (primary) degree. The electives include: 1. Middle years students and schools 2. Teaching strategies for engaging learners 3. Teaching students with learning difficulties, and 4. Middle-years curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. In the university-based component of this unit, preservice teachers engaged in learning about middle years students and schools, and gained knowledge of government policies pertaining to GAT students. Further explored within in this unit was the importance of: collaboration between teachers, parents/carers and school personnel in supporting middle years GAT students; incorporating challenging learning experiences that promoted higher order thinking and problem solving skills; real world learning experiences for students and; the alignment and design of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment that is relevant to the students development, interests and needs. The participants were third-year Bachelor of Education (primary) preservice teachers who were completing an elective unit as part of the middle years of schooling learning with a focus on GAT students. They were assigned one student from a local school. In the six subsequent ninety minute weekly lessons, the preservice teachers were responsible for designing learning activities that would engage and extend the GAT students. Furthermore, preservice teachers made decisions about suitable pedagogical approaches and designed the assessment task to align with the curriculum and the developmental needs of their middle years GAT student. This research aims to describe preservice teachers’ perceptions of their education for teaching gifted and talented students.

Early years teachers’ attitudes towards mathematics

Worldwide, there is considerable attention to providing a supportive mathematics learning environment for young children because attitude formation and achievement in these early years of schooling have a lifelong impact. Key influences on young children during these early years are their teachers. Practising early years teachers‟ attitudes towards mathematics influence the teaching methods they employ, which in turn, affects young students‟ attitudes towards mathematics, and ultimately, their achievement. However, little is known about practising early years teachers‟ attitudes to mathematics or how these attitudes form, which is the focus of this study. The research questions were: 1. What attitudes do practising early years teachers hold towards mathematics? 2. How did the teachers‟ mathematics attitudes form? This study adopted an explanatory case study design (Yin, 2003) to investigate practising early years teachers‟ attitudes towards mathematics and the formation of these attitudes. The research took place in a Brisbane southside school situated in a middle socio-economic area. The site was chosen due to its accessibility to the researcher. The participant group consisted of 20 early years teachers. They each completed the Attitude Towards Mathematics Inventory (ATMI) (Schackow, 2005), which is a 40 item instrument that measures attitudes across the four dimensions of attitude, namely value, enjoyment, self-confidence and motivation. The teachers‟ total ATMI scores were classified according to five quintiles: strongly negative, negative, neutral, positive and strongly positive. The results of the survey revealed that these teachers‟ attitudes ranged across only three categories with one teacher classified as strongly positive, twelve teachers classified as positive and seven teachers classified as neutral. No teachers were identified as having negative or strongly negative attitudes. Subsequent to the surveys, six teachers with a breadth of attitudes were selected from the original cohort to participate in open-ended interviews to investigate the formation of their attitudes. The interview data were analysed according to the four dimensions of attitudes (value, enjoyment, self-confidence, motivation) and three stages of education (primary, secondary, tertiary). Highlighted in the findings is the critical impact of schooling experiences on the formation of student attitudes towards mathematics. Findings suggest that primary school experiences are a critical influence on the attitudes of adults who become early years teachers. These findings also indicate the vital role tertiary institutions play in altering the attitudes of preservice teachers who have had negative schooling experiences. Experiences that teachers indicated contributed to the formation of positive attitudes in their own education were games, group work, hands-on activities, positive feedback and perceived relevance. In contrast, negative experiences that teachers stated influenced their attitudes were insufficient help, rushed teaching, negative feedback and a lack of relevance of the content. These findings together with the literature on teachers‟ attitudes and mathematics education were synthesized in a model titled a Cycle of Early Years Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Mathematics. This model explains positive and negative influences on attitudes towards mathematics and how the attitudes of adults are passed on to children, who then as adults themselves, repeat the cycle by passing on attitudes to a new generation. The model can provide guidance for practising teachers and for preservice and inservice education about ways to foster positive influences to attitude formation in mathematics and inhibit negative influences. Two avenues for future research arise from the findings of this study both relating to attitudes and secondary school experiences. The first question relates to the resilience of attitudes, in particular, how an individual can maintain positive attitudes towards mathematics developed in primary school, despite secondary school experiences that typically have a negative influence on attitude. The second question relates to the relationship between attitudes and achievement, specifically, why secondary students achieve good grades in mathematics despite a lack of enjoyment, which is one of the dimensions of attitude.

Redesigning school spaces : creating possibilities for learning

This chapter reports on a project in which university researchers’ expertise in architecture, literacy and communications enabled two teachers in one school to expand the forms of literacy that primary school children engaged in. Starting from the school community’s concerns about an urban renewal project in their neighbourhood, participants collaborated to develop a curriculum of spatial literacies with real-world goals and outcomes. We describe how the creative re-design of curriculum and pedagogy by classroom teachers, in collaboration with university academics and students, allowed students aged 8 to 12 years to appropriate semiotic resources from their local neighbourhood, home communities, and popular culture to make a difference to their material surrounds. We argue that there are productive possibilities for educators who integrate critical and place-based approaches to the design and teaching of the literacy curriculum with work in other learning areas such as society and environment, technology and design and the arts. The student production of expansive and socially significant texts enabled by such approaches may be especially necessary in contemporary neoconservative policy contexts that tend to limit and constrain what is possible in schools.

Internship : interpreting micropolitical contexts

Many university faculties of education across Australia employ a model of internship for final semester pre-service teacher education students to help them make a smooth transition into the teaching profession. While a growing body of research has explored pre-service teachers’ experiences of their practicum, including the internship, which is the final professional experience within a course of study, very little work has considered micropolitics as a lens through which to interpret interns’ relationships with their school supervisors/mentors. This paper uses a micropolitical framework to interpret reflective reports written by 145 Bachelor of Education (primary) interns who recorded their perceptions of their professional learning experience within the context of a relationship with their school-based mentors. Several key themes are identified that highlight interns’ reports of a range of micropolitical strategies at play. The paper concludes by raising a number of implications for universities and schools regarding how better to facilitate interns’ transition into the profession.

Challenges of elementary science teaching: an Australian perspective

This chapter profiles research that has explored the role of affect in the teaching of science in Australia particularly on primary or elementary science education. Affect is a complex set of characteristics that relate to the interactions between an individual’s knowledge and emotional responses to a stimulus. Thus, there are many dimensions and theoretical frameworks that inform our understanding of how and why people behave in particular ways.

100 futures now : designing sustainable futures

This presentation tells the story of an initiative in middle schooling at Kelvin Grove State College that begins in the Art studios, but reaches out to other disciplines and approaches, and to community and industry partners. It is inspired by the potential of 'future thinking' to become a compelling focus in contemporary art and design. Ethically it espouses a simple premise": every student in our classrooms now has a stake in creating livable, democratic and creative futures. Every student has the potential to be an active force in making that future. "100 Futures Now" is a project that envisages creative and imaginative students working in collaboration with artists and designers to visualize amazing futures and communicate their vision through art and design. "100 Futures Now" is one in a series of innovative curriculum initiatives at Kelvin Grove State College designed to build sustainable practice in arts education with the support of partners in industry and universities and with resident artists and designers. The model blends elements of art and design methodology to focus on the critical and creative thinking skills prioritised in ACARA and 21st century curriculum. The organisers are developing a sustainable model for working with resident artists that goes beyond a single arts intervention or extension/enrichment experience. In this model artists and designers are collaborators in the design of learning experiences that support future programs. This model also looks to transfer the benefits of residencies to the wider school community (in this case to middle schooling curriculum) and to teachers in other curriculum areas, and not exclusively to the immediate target group. In "100 Futures Now", story-making is the engine that powers the creative process. For this reason the program uses a series of imaginative scenarios, including those of speculative fiction and science, as departure points for inquiry, and applies the methodologies of arts and design practice to explore and express student story telling and story making. The story-making responses of student teams will naturally be expressed multimodally through visual art, design artifacts, installation, performance and digital works. The project’s focus on narratives and its modes of communication (performance/installation) are inspired by the work of experimental contemporary design practices and the speculative scenarios of U.K. based designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. Thanks to the support of an Arts Queensland Artist-in -Residence grant in 2014, resident artists and designers who work with a diversity of ideas and approaches ranging over science, bio-ethics, biodiversity, behavior and ethics, ambient sound, urbanism, food, and wearable design, will work with middle school students as catalysts for deeper thinking and creative action. All these rich fields for future speculation will become triggers for team inquiry into the deeper connections between the past, the present, and future challenges such as climate, waste, energy, sustainability and resilience. These imagined futures will form the platform for a critical, sustainability/design futures approach that will involve questioning assumptions and empowering students as agents rather than consumers of change.

Critically deconstructing race through a multimodal analysis of iPad Tellagami videos

Drawing on multimodal texts produced by an Indigenous school community in Australia, I apply critical race theory and multimodal analysis (Jewitt, 2011) to decolonise digital heritage practices for Indigenous students. This study focuses on the particular ways in which students’ counter-narratives about race were embedded in multimodal and digital design in the development of a digital cultural heritage (Giaccardi, 2012). Data analysis involved applying multimodal analysis to the students’ Gamis, following social semiotic categories and principles theorised by Kress and Bezemer (2008), and Jewitt (2006, 2011). This includes attending to the following semiotic elements: visual design, movement and gesture, gaze, and recorded speech, and their interrelationships. The analysis also draws on critical race theory to interpret the students’ representations of race. In particular, the multimodal texts were analysed as a site for students’ views of Indigenous oppression in relation to the colonial powers and ownership of the land in Australian history (Ladson-Billings, 2009). Pedagogies that explore counter-narratives of cultural heritage in the official curriculum can encourage students to reframe their own racial identity, while challenging dominant white, historical narratives of colonial conquest, race, and power (Gutierrez, 2008). The children’s multimodal “Gami” videos, created with the iPad application, Tellagami, enabled the students to imagine hybrid, digital social identities and perspectives of Australian history that were tied to their Indigenous cultural heritage (Kamberelis, 2001).

Valuing Indigenous heritage through multimodal literacy

The study on which this presentation is based focuses on the particular ways in which students’ counter-narratives about race were embedded in multimodal and digital design in the development of a digital cultural heritage. The multimodal texts were analysed as a site for students’ views of Indigenous oppression in relation to the colonial powers and ownership of the land in Australian history. In this presentation, Kathy will demonstrate how pedagogies that explore counter-narratives of cultural heritage in the official curriculum can encourage students to reframe their own racial identity, while challenging dominant white, historical narratives of colonial conquest, race, and power. In the second part of this session, Indigenous Principal, John Davis and teachers from HymbaYumba Community Hub will provide a school-based, Indigenous panel to inspire educators with authentic ways to embed Indigenous knowledge in the curriculum.

Bringing nature to schools to promote children’s physical activity

Physical activity (PA) is essential for human health and wellbeing across all age, socioeconomic and ethnic groups. Engagement with the natural world is a new defining criterion for enhancing the benefits of PA particularly for children and young people. Interacting with nature benefits children’s social and emotional wellbeing, develops resilience and reduces the risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes across all population groups. Governments around the world are now recognising the importance of children spending more active time outdoors. However, children’s outdoor activities, free play and nature-related exploration are often structured and supervised by adults due to safety concerns and risks. In this context schools become more accessible and safe options for children to engage in PA outdoors with the presence of nature features. Research on school designs involving young children has revealed that children prefer nature-related features in school environments. Affordances in nature may increase children’s interest in physically active behaviours. Given that present school campuses are designed for operational efficiency and economic reasons there is a need to re-design schools responding to the positive role of nature on human health. If schools were re-designed to incorporate diverse natural features children’s PA and consequent health and wellbeing would likely improve markedly.

The gradual release of responsibility: A case study of teaching science inquiry skills

This thesis investigated how a year-4 teacher used a pedagogical approach referred to as the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model of instruction for teaching Science Inquiry Skills in a primary classroom. Through scaffolding her students' learning using the GRR, the teacher guided her students towards developing an understanding about Scientific Inquiry leading to the foundations of scientific literacy. A learning environment was established in which students engaged in rich conversations, designed and conducted experiments using fair testing procedures, analysed and offered justifications for results, and negotiated knowledge claims in ways similar to some of those in the scientific community.

Cooperative learning in Thailand : professional development to enhance primary education

The overall purpose of this study was to develop a model to inform the design of professional development programs and the implementation of cooperative learning within Thai primary school mathematics classrooms. Action research design, with interviews, surveys and observations, was used for this study. Survey questionnaires and classroom observations investigated the factors that influence the implementation of cooperative learning strategies and academic achievement in Thai primary school mathematics classrooms. The teachers’ interviews and classroom observation also examined the factors that need to be addressed in teacher professional development programs in order to facilitate cooperative learning in Thai mathematics classrooms. The outcome of this study was a model consisting of two sets of criteria to inform the successful implementation of cooperative learning in Thai primary schools. The first set of criteria was for proposers and developers of professional development programs. This set consists of macro- and micro-level criteria. The macro-level criteria focus on the overall structure of professional development programs and how and when the professional development programs should be implemented. The micro-level criteria focused on the specific topics that need to be included in professional development programs. The second set of criteria was for Thai principals and teachers to facilitate the introduction of cooperative learning in their classrooms. The research outcome also indicated that the attainment of these cooperative learning strategies and skills had a positive impact on the students’ learning of mathematics.