An exploratory study of the current assessment practices for improving the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) in two Vietnamese universities

This case study investigated EFL assessment practices at one public and one private university to explore the support of assessment for English language learning (ELL) within the Vietnamese sociocultural context. Findings demonstrated the potential of assessment to engage students in learning; enhance their understanding of the learning objectives; and facilitate their learning reflection. Findings also identified strong influences of contextual factors such as teachers' language assessment literacy, high-stakes testing and institutional administrative policies on the practices of assessment for ELL. This study contributes to research on Assessment for Learning and EFL education at tertiary level in Vietnam and other similar sociocultural contexts.

Exploring links between pedagogical knowledge practices and student outcomes in STEM education for primary schools

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is an emerging initiative in Australia, particularly in primary schools. This qualitative research aimed to understand Year 4 students' involvement in an integrated STEM education unit that focused on science concepts (e.g., states of matter, testing properties of materials) and mathematics concepts (e.g., 3D shapes and metric measurements) for designing, making and testing a strong and safe medical kit to insulate medicines (ice cubes) at desirable temperatures. Data collection tools included student work samples, photographs, written responses from students and the teacher, and researcher notes. In a post-hoc analysis, a pedagogical knowledge practice framework (i.e., planning, timetabling, preparation, teaching strategies, content knowledge, problem solving, classroom management, questioning, implementation, assessment, and viewpoints) was used to explain links to student outcomes in STEM education. The study showed how pedagogical knowledge practices may be linked to student outcomes (knowledge, understanding, skill development, and values and attitudes) for a STEM education activity.

Why does child labor persist with declining poverty?

We develop a dynamic overlapping generations model to highlight the role of income inequality in explaining the persistence of child labor under declining poverty. Differential investment in two forms of human capital—schooling and health—in the presence of inequality gives rise to a nonconvergent income distribution in the steady state characterized by multiple steady states of relative income with varying levels of education, health, and child labor. The child labor trap thus generated is shown to preserve itself despite rising per capita income. Policy recommendations include public provision of education targeted toward reducing schooling costs for the poor or raising the efficacy of public health infrastructure.

Practices to enhance peer program implementation integrity to safeguard peer leaders and learners

The powerful influence of peers on fellow students’ learning engagement and their ability to foster self-efficacy is well recognised. A positive learner mindset can be fostered through establishment of guided meaningful relationships formed between peers. Recognising the value of peer connections in shaping the student learning experience, peer programs have been widely adopted by universities as a mechanism to facilitate these connections. While potentially beneficial, a lack of knowledge and inexperience by program implementers can lead to program outcomes being compromised. To mitigate this risk, QUT has established university wide systems and benchmarks for enacting peer programs. These measures aim to promote program implementation integrity by supporting and developing the knowledge and capabilities of peer leaders and program coordinators. This paper describes a range of measures that have been instigated to optimise the quality of programs and ensure outcomes are mutually constructive and beneficial for all stakeholders.

Extending the validity of the Feeding Practices and Structure Questionnaire

Background Feeding practices are commonly examined as potentially modifiable determinants of children’s eating behaviours and weight status. Although a variety of questionnaires exist to assess different feeding aspects, many lack thorough reliability and validity testing. The Feeding Practices and Structure Questionnaire (FPSQ) is a tool designed to measure early feeding practices related to non-responsive feeding and structure of the meal environment. Face validity, factorial validity, internal reliability and cross-sectional correlations with children’s eating behaviours have been established in mothers with 2-year-old children. The aim of the present study was to further extend the validity of the FPSQ by examining factorial, construct and predictive validity, and stability. Methods Participants were from the NOURISH randomised controlled trial which evaluated an intervention with first-time mothers designed to promote protective feeding practices. Maternal feeding practices (FP) and child eating behaviours were assessed when children were aged 2 years and 3.7 years (n=388). Confirmatory Factor analysis, group differences, predictive relationships, and stability were tested. Results The original 9-factor structure was confirmed when children were aged 3.7±0.3 years. Cronbach’s alpha was above the recommended 0.70 cut-off for all factors except Structured Meal Timing, Over Restriction and Distrust in Appetite which were 0.58, 0.67 and 0.66 respectively. Allocated group differences reflected behaviour consistent with intervention content and all feeding practices were stable across both time points (range of r= 0.45-0.70). There was some evidence for the predictive validity of factors with 2 FP showing expected relationships, 2 FP showing expected and unexpected relationships and 5 FP showing no relationship. Conclusions Reliability and validity was demonstrated for most subscales of the FPSQ. Future validation is warranted with culturally diverse samples and with fathers and other caregivers. The use of additional outcomes to further explore predictive validity is recommended as well as testing construct validity and test-retest reliability of the questionnaire.

Report: The Canadian Best Practices Educational Toolkits: Translating evidence-based stroke recommendations into practical implementation resources

The Canadian Best Practice Recommendations for Stroke Care are intended to reduce variations in stroke care and facilitate closure of the gap between evidence and practice (Lindsay et al., 2010). The publication of best practice recommendations is only the beginning of this process. The guidelines themselves are not sufficient to change practice and increase consistency in care. Therefore, a key objective of the Canadian Stroke Network (CSN) Best Practices Working Group (BPWG) is to encourage and facilitate ongoing professional development and training for health care professionals providing stroke care. This is addressed through a multi-factorial approach to the creation and dissemination of inter-professional implementation tools and resources. The resources developed by CSN span pre-professional education, ongoing professional development, patient education and may be used to inform systems change. With a focus on knowledge translation, several inter-professional point-of-care tools have been developed by the CSN in collaboration with numerous professional organizations and expert volunteers. These resources are used to facilitate awareness, understanding and applications of evidence-based care across stroke care settings. Similar resources are also developed specifically for stroke patients, their families and informal caregivers, and the general public. With each update of the Canadian Best Practice Recommendations for Stroke Care, the BPWG and topic-specific writing groups propose priority areas for ongoing resource development. In 2010, two of these major educational initiatives were undertaken and recently completed—one to support continuing education for health care professionals regarding secondary stroke prevention and the other to educate families, informal caregivers and the public about pediatric stroke. This paper presents an overview of these two resources, and we encourage health care professionals to integrate these into their personal learning plans and tool kits for patients.

Creative destruction: The Trans-Pacific Partnership, jobs, and labor rights

In the United States, there has been a fierce debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and its impact upon jobs, employment, and labor rights and standards. This sweeping trade agreement spans the Pacific Rim, and includes such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, and Japan. There has been concern over the secrecy surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership — particularly in respect of labor rights.

After the gold rush: Patent law and biological inventions

In response to scientific breakthroughs in biotechnology, the development of new technologies, and the demands of a hungry capitalist marketplace, patent law has expanded to accommodate a range of biological inventions. There has been much academic and public debate as to whether gene patents have a positive impact upon research and development, health-care, and the protection of the environment. In a satire of prevailing patenting practices, the English poet and part-time casino waitress, Donna MacLean, sought a patent application - GB0000180.0 - in respect of herself. She explained that she had satisfied the usual patent criteria - in that she was novel, inventive, and useful: It has taken 30 years of hard labor for me to discover and invent myself, and now I wish to protect my invention from unauthorized exploitation, genetic or otherwise. I am new: I have led a private existence and I have not made the invention of myself public. I am not obvious (2000: 18). MacLean said she had many industrial applications. ’For example, my genes can be used in medical research to extremely profitable ends - I therefore wish to have sole control of my own genetic material' (2000: 18). She observed in an interview: ’There's a kind of unpleasant, grasping, greedy atmosphere at the moment around the mapping of the human genome ... I wanted to see if a human being could protect their own genes in law' (Meek, 2000). This special issue of Law in Context charts a new era in the long-standing debate over biological inventions. In the wake of the expansion of patentable subject matter, there has been great strain placed upon patent criteria - such as ’novelty', ’inventive step', and ’utility'. Furthermore, there has been a new focus upon legal doctrines which facilitate access to patented inventions - like the defence of experimental use, the ’Bolar' exception, patent pooling, and compulsory licensing. There has been a concerted effort to renew patent law with an infusion of ethical principles dealing with informed consent and benefit sharing. There has also been a backlash against the commercialisation of biological inventions, and a call by some activists for the abolition of patents on genetic inventions. This collection considers a wide range of biological inventions - ranging from micro-organisms, plants and flowers and transgenic animals to genes, express sequence tags, and research tools, as well as genetic diagnostic tests and pharmaceutical drugs. It is thus an important corrective to much policy work, which has been limited in its purview to merely gene patents and biomedical research. This collection compares and contrasts the various approaches of a number of jurisdictions to the legal problems in respect of biological inventions. In particular, it looks at the complexities of the 1998 European Union Directive on the Legal Protection of Biotechnological Inventions, as well as decisions of member states, such as the Netherlands, and peripheral states, like Iceland. The edition considers US jurisprudence on patent law and policy, as well as recent developments in Canada. It also focuses upon recent developments in Australia - especially in the wake of parallel policy inquiries into gene patents and access to genetic resources.

Contextual constraining of student design practices

Background Engineering design is of significant interest to engineering educators. As yet, how the higher education context shapes student outcomes in engineering design courses remains underexplored. Since design courses are the primary way students are taught the critical topic of design, it is important to understand how the institutional and organizational contexts shape student outcomes and how we could improve design projects, given the context. Purpose We sought to answer two questions: What aspects of the design education process are salient, or important, for students? How do these salient aspects affect their design practices? Design/Method We used a qualitative case study approach to address the research questions because of our emphasis on understanding process-related aspects of design work and developing an interpretive understanding from the students’ perspective. Results Using a nested structuration framework, we show that the context of design practices shaped students’ outcomes by constraining their approach to the project and by providing a framework for their design process. We provide recommendations for design educators to help students overcome impediments to achieving learning objectives for design activities. Our research questions the efficacy of teaching engineering design when a design problem lacks a context beyond the classroom. Conclusions The institutional and organizational contexts influence student design practices. Engineering educators should carefully consider the potential effects of the design projects they implement within a higher education context.

The Down Under book and film remind us our copyright law’s still unfair for artists

Australian copyright law is broken, and the Australian Government isn’t moving quickly to fix it. Borrowing, quoting, and homage are fundamental to the creative process. This is how people are inspired to create. Under Australian law, though, most borrowing is copyright infringement, unless it is licensed or falls within particular, narrow categories. This year marks five years since the very real consequences of Australia’s restrictive copyright law for Australian artists were made clear in the controversial litigation over Men at Work’s 1981 hit Down Under. The band lost a court case in 2010 that found that the song’s iconic flute riff copied some of the 1934 children’s song Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gumtree. A new book and documentary tell us more about the story behind the anthem – and the court case. The book, Down Under by Trevor Conomy, and the documentary, You Better Take Cover by Harry Hayes, bring renewed interest and new perspectives on the tragic story.

Are green project management practices applicable to traditional projects?

As the social environment begins to create more awareness in the area of conserving the natural environment, a new generation of building has emerged. A trend of constructing buildings that minimise impacts on the environment has been established in the construction industry. Therefore, suitable project management practices have been adopted to efficiently manage the construction of these green buildings. This study aims at investigating practices of project management in traditional and accredited green construction projects, with the purpose of discovering if Green Project Management (GPM) practices can be applied to traditional projects to achieve more successful outcomes. The process of GPM contains what applied to traditional projects, could possibly result in benefits in terms of budget control and constructability. Currently the construction industry has been known to suffer difficulties within these areas; therefore GPM practices could possibly hold a solution to these common problems.

Location and labor: Critical crossroads in global film and television

I approached the editorial prompt as an opportunity to work through some of the concerns driving my current research on creative labor in emergent or ‘peripheral’ media hubs, centers of production activity outside established media capitals that are nevertheless increasingly integrated into a global production apparatus. It builds from my research on the role that film, television and digital media production have played in the economic and cultural strategies of Glasgow, Scotland, and extends the focus on media work to other locations, including Prague and Budapest. I am particularly drawn to the spatial dynamics at play in these locations and how local producers, writers, directors and crew negotiate a sense of place and creative identity against the flows and counter-flows of capital and culture. This means not only asking questions about the growing ensemble of people, places, firms and policies that make international productions possible, but also studying the more quotidian relationships between media workers and the locations (both near and far) where they now find work. I do not see these tasks as unrelated. On the one hand, such queries underscore how international production depends on a growing constellation of interchangeable parts and is facilitated by various actors whose agendas may or may not converge. On the other hand, these questions also betray an even more complicated dynamic, a process that is shifting the spatial orientation of both location and labor around uneven and contested scales. As local industries reimagine themselves as global players, media practitioners are caught up in a new geography of creative labor: not only are personnel finding it increasingly necessary to hop from place to place to follow the work, but also place itself is changing, as locations morph into nebulous amalgamations of tax rebates, subsidized facilities, production services and (when it still matters) natural beauty.

Performance pay for Australian teachers: A critical policy historiography

In May 2011, the Australian Federal Education Minister announced there would be a unique, innovative and new policy of performance pay for teachers, Rewards for Great Teachers (Garrett, 2011a). In response, this paper uses critical policy historiography to argue that the unintended consequences of performance pay for teachers makes it unlikely it will deliver improved quality or efficiency in Australian schools. What is new, in the Australian context, is that performance pay is one of a raft of education policies being driven by the federal government within a system that constitutionally and historically has placed the responsibility for schooling with the states and territories. Since 2008, a key platform of the Australian federal Labor government has been a commitment to an Education Revolution that would promote quality, equity and accountability in Australian schools. This commitment has resulted in new national initiatives impacting on Australian schools including a high-stakes testing regime 14 National Assessment Program 13 Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) 14a mandated national curriculum (the Australian Curriculum), professional standards for teachers and teacher accreditation 14Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) 14and the idea of rewarding excellent teachers through performance pay (Garrett, 2011b). These reforms demonstrate the increased influence of the federal government in education policy processes and the growth of a 1Ccoercive federalism 1D that pits the state and federal governments against each other (Harris-Hart, 2010). Central to these initiatives is the measuring, or auditing, of educational practices and relationships. While this shift in education policy hegemony from state to federal governments has been occurring in Australia at least since the 1970s, it has escalated and been transformed in more recent times with a greater emphasis on national human capital agendas which link education and training to Australia 19s international economic competitiveness (Lingard & Sellar, in press). This paper uses historically informed critical analysis to critique claims about the effects of such policies. We argue that performance pay has a detailed and complex historical trajectory both internationally and within Australian states. Using Gale 19s (2001) critical policy historiography, we illuminate some of the effects that performance pay policies have had on education internationally and in particular within Australia. This critical historical lens also provides opportunities to highlight how teachers have, in the past, tactically engaged with such policies.