YuMi deadly maths program : efficacy and collaboration

Historically, perceptions about mathematics and how it is taught and learned in schools have been mixed and as a consequence have an influence on self efficacy. There are those of us who see mathematics as logical and an enjoyable subject to learn, whilst others see mathematics as irrelevant, difficult and contributing to their school failure. Research has shown that over-represented in the latter are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, low SES and ESL students. These students are the focus of YuMi Deadly Centre (YDC) professional learning and research work at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane.

Relationship between emotional climate and the fluency of classroom interactions

This study examined emotional climate in relation to the teaching and learning of grade 7 science. A multi-method and multi-theoretic approach used sociocultural frameworks as a foundation for interpretive research, conversation analysis, prosody analysis, and studies of nonverbal conduct. Emotional climate varied continuously throughout a lesson. Dialogues occurred and afforded learning when interactions between the teacher and students were fluent and included humour and collective effervescence. Emotional climate was negatively valenced when the teacher and/or students endeavoured to establish and maintain power by restricting others’ participation to spectator roles. The teacher’s endeavours to maintain and establish control over students were potentially detrimental to teaching and learning, teachers and learners. This type of teaching gradually evolved into a form we referred to as cranky teaching, whereby the teacher and her students showed signs of frustration and the enacted teaching and learning roles lacked fluency. The methods we pioneered in the present study might be helpful for other teachers who wish to participate in research on their classes to ascertain what works and should be strengthened, and identify practices and rituals that are deleterious and in need of change.

Successful outcomes in vocational education and training courses : how pedagogy and expectations influence achievement

This paper reports on a four year Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project titled Skilling Indigenous Queensland, conducted in regional areas of Queensland, Australia from 2009 to 2013. The project sought to investigate vocational education, training (VET) and teaching, Indigenous learners’ needs, employer cultural and expectations and community culture and expectations to identify best practice in numeracy teaching for Indigenous VET learners. Specifically it focused on ways to enhance the teaching and learning of courses and the associated mathematics in such courses to benefit learners and increase their future opportunities of employment. To date thirty-nine teachers/trainers/teacher aides and two hundred and thirty-one students consented to participate in the project. Nine VET courses were nominated to be the focus on the study. This paper focuses on questionnaire and interview responses from four trainers, two teacher aides and six students. In recent years a considerable amount of funding has been allocated to increasing Indigenous Peoples’ participation in education and employment. This increased funding is predicated on the assumption that it will make a difference and contribute to closing the education gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians (Council of Australia Governments, 2009). The central tenet is that access to education for Indigenous People will create substantial social and economic benefits for regional and remote Indigenous People. The project’s aim is to address some of the issues associated with the gap. To achieve the aims, the project adopted a mixed methods design aimed at benefitting research participants and included: participatory collaborative action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) and, community research (Smith, 1999). Participatory collaborative action research refers to a is a “collective, self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social and educational practices” (Kemmis et al., 1988, p. 5). Community research is described as an approach that “conveys a much more intimate, human and self-defined space” (p. 127). Community research relies on and validates the community’s own definitions. As the project is informed by the social at a community level, it is described as “community action research or emancipatory research” (Smith, 1999, p. 127). It seeks to demonstrate benefit to the community, making positive differences in the lives of Indigenous People and communities. The data collection techniques included survey questionnaires, video recording of teaching and learning processes, teacher reflective video analysis of teaching, observations, semi-structured interviews and student numeracy testing. As a result of these processes, the findings indicate that VET course teachers work hard to adopt contextualising strategies to their teaching, however this process is not always straight forward because of the perceptions of how mathematics has been taught and learned historically. Further teachers, trainers and students have high expectations of one another with the view to successful outcomes from the courses.

Mentoring as professional development: ‘growth for both’ mentor and mentee

Teachers need professional development to keep current with teaching practices, although costs for extensive professional development can be prohibitive across an education system. Mentoring provides one way for embedding cost-effective professional development. This mixed-method study includes surveying mentor teachers (n = 101) on a five-part Likert scale and interviews with experienced mentors (n = 10) to investigate professional development for mentors as a result of the mentoring process. Quantitative data were analysed through a pedagogical knowledge framework and qualitative data were collated into themes. Survey data showed that although mentoring of pedagogical knowledge was variable, mentoring pedagogical knowledge practices occurs with the majority of mentors, which requires mentors to evaluate and articulate teaching practices. Qualitative data showed that mentoring acted as professional development and led towards enhancing communication skills, developing leadership roles (problem-solving and building capacity) and advancing pedagogical knowledge. Providing professional development to teachers on mentoring can help to build capacity in two ways: quality mentoring of preservice teachers through explicit mentoring practices, and reflecting and deconstructing teaching practices for mentors’ own pedagogical advancements.

We need to talk about cultural studies [Review]

A review of Graeme Turner, What’s Become of Cultural Studies (Sage, London, 2012) and Lawrence Grossberg, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense (Duke University Press, Durham, 2010).

Adaptive teachers embracing new ways of learning with robotics in Chinese schools

In July 2010, China announced the “National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development(2010-2020)” (PRC 2010). The Plan calls for an education system that: • promotes an integrated development which harnesses everyone’s talent; • combines learning and thinking; unifies knowledge and practice; • allows teachers to teach according to individuals’ needs; and • reforms education quality evaluation and personnel evaluation systems focusing on performance including character, knowledge, ability and other factors. This paper discusses the design and implementation of a Professional Learning Program (PLP) undertaken by 432 primary, middle and high school teachers in China. The aim of this initiative was to develop adaptive expertise in using technology that facilitated innovative science and technology teaching and learning as envisaged by the Chinese Ministry of Education’s (2010-2020) education reforms. Key principles derived from literature about professional learning and scaffolding of learning informed the design of the PLP. The analysis of data revealed that the participants had made substantial progress towards the development of adaptive expertise. This was manifested not only by advances in the participants’ repertoires of Subject Matter Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge but also in changes to their levels of confidence and identities as teachers. It was found that through time the participants had coalesced into a professional learning community that readily engaged in the sharing, peer review, reuse and adaption, and collaborative design of innovative science and technology learning and assessment activities.

Reflexive professionalism : reclaiming the voice of authority in shaping the discourses of education policy

The nature and value of ‘professionalism’ has long been contested by both producers and consumers of policy. Most recently, governments have rewritten and redefined professionalism as compliance with externally imposed ‘standards’. This has been achieved by silencing the voices of those who inhabit the professional field of education. This paper uses Foucauldian archaeology to excavate the enunciative field of professionalism by digging through the academic and institutional (political) archive, and in doing so identifies two key policy documents for further analysis. The excavation shows that while the voices of (academic) authority speak of competing discourses emerging, with professional standards promulgated as the mechanism to enhance professionalism, an alternative regime of truth identifies the privileged use of (managerial) voices from outside the field of education to create a discourse of compliance. There has long been a mismatch between the voices of authority on discourses around professionalism from the academic archive and those that count in contemporary and emerging Australian educational policy. In this paper, we counter this mismatch and argue that reflexive educators’ regimes of truth are worthy of attention and should be heard and amplified.

Negotiating teacher identities : dialogic reflections on classroom interaction in a transnational context

This study investigates the development of teacher identity in a transnational context through an analysis of the voices of sixteen preservice teachers from Hong Kong who engage in interaction with primary students in an Australian classroom. The context for this research is the school-based experience undertaken by these preservice English as a second language teachers as part of their short language immersion (SLIM) program in Brisbane, Australia. Such SLIM programs are a genre of study abroad programs which have been gaining in popularity within teacher education in Australia, attended by preservice and inservice teachers from China, Hong Kong, Korea, and other Asian countries. This research is conducted at a time when the imperative to globalise higher education provision is a strategic factor in the educational policies of both Australia and Hong Kong. In Australia, international educational services now constitute the country’s third largest export with more than 400,000 students coming to Australia to study annually. In order to maintain Australia’s current global position as the third most popular Englishspeaking study destination, the government is now focusing on sustainability and the quality of the study experience being offered to international students (Bradley Review, 2008). In Hong Kong, the government sponsors both preservice and inservice English as a second language (ESL) teachers to undertake SLIM programs in Australia and other English-speaking countries, as part of their policy of promoting high levels of English proficiency in Hong Kong classrooms. Transnational teacher education is an important issue to which this study contributes insights into the affordances and constraints of a school-based experience in the transnational context. Second language teacher education has been defined as interventions designed to develop participants’ professional knowledge. In this study, it is argued that participation in a different community of practice helps to foreground tacit theories of second language pedagogy, making them visible and open to review. Questions of pedagogy are also seen as questions of teacher identity, constituting the way that one is in the classroom. I take up a sociocultural and poststructural framework, drawing on the work of James Gee and Mikhail Bakhtin, to theorise the construction of teacher identity as emerging through dialogic relations and socially situated discursive practices. From this perspective, this study investigates whether these teachers engage with different ways of representing themselves through appropriating, adapting or rejecting Discourses prevailing in the Australian classroom. Research suggests that reflecting on dilemmas encountered as lived experiences can extend professional understandings. In this study, the participants engage in a process of dialogic reflection on their intercultural classroom interactions, examining with their peers and their lecturer/researcher selected moments of dissonance that they have faced in the unfamiliar context of an Australian primary classroom. It is argued that the recursive and multivoiced nature of this process of reflection on practice allows participants opportunities to negotiate new understandings of second language teacher identity. Dialogic learning, based on the theories of Bakhtin and Vygotsky, provides the theoretic framing not only for the process of reflection instantiated in this study, but also features in the analysis of the participants’ second language classroom practices. The research design uses a combined discourse analytic and ethnographic approach as a logic-of-inquiry to explore the dialogic relationships which these second language teachers negotiate with their students and their peers in the transnational context. In this way, through discourse analysis of their classroom talk and reflective dialogues, assisted by the analytic tools of speech genres and discourse formats, I explore the participants’ ways of doing and being second language teachers. Thus, this analysis traces the process of ideological becoming of these beginner teachers as shifts in their understandings of teacher and student identities. This study also demonstrates the potential for a nontraditional stimulated recall interview to provide dialogic scaffolding for beginner teachers to reflect productively on their practice.

Beginning teachers’ achievements and challenges : implications for induction and mentoring

It is recognised worldwide that beginning teachers require more support as reasons for high attrition rates (e.g., lack of appreciation from colleagues, unsatisfying working conditions, inadequate teacher preparation) indicate current systems are failing them. One way of addressing their specific needs is to understand their achievements and challenges during their first year of teaching. This qualitative study tracks 10 beginning primary teachers’ achievements and challenges at two points (April and September) during their first year of teaching in Australian public schools. Findings showed that building relationships and behaviour management were considered achievements at these two points, yet behaviour management was also considered a challenge. Other challenges included: learning differentiation, working with parents, and negotiating a life-work balance. Induction into the school culture and infrastructure continued to be important, especially developing skills on handling difficult parents and creating a life-work balance. Simultaneously, they required mentoring for effective teaching in classroom management and differentiation. A two-prong approach of induction into the school culture and infrastructure and mentoring for effective teaching needs to continue throughout the first year of teaching, and possibly beyond.

Teaching teachers for the future : how, what, why, and what next?

This paper contextualises the Teaching Teachers of the Future (TTF) Project and acts as a preamble for the TTF stream of papers at ACEC2012. It discusses the aims and objectives of the project, its genesis in a changing educational and political landscape, the use of TPACK as a theoretical scaffold, and briefly report on the operations of the various components and partners. Further, it will discuss the research opportunities afforded by the project including a national survey of all pre-service teachers in Australia gauging their TPACK confidence and the use of the Most Significant Change (MSC) methodology. Finally the paper will discuss the outcomes of the project and its future.

Validation of the Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents (ESSA) in Vietnam

Introduction To date, there has been little systematic, quantitative research on the links between academic pressure and mental health among adolescents in Asia, and none in Vietnam. In part, this is because of a lack of appropriate tools to measure this complex phenomenon. This study was to validate the Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents (ESSA), developed and tested in China, with the aim of fostering further research in Asia. Methods A total of 1283 students were recruited in 3 secondary schools and 3 high schools in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Anonymous, selfreport questionnaires included the ESSA and previously validated measures of mental health. Results Among the 1226 questionnaires available, 54% of respondents were female. The mean age was 15.3 years. Students reported substantial study burden. The ESSA had good internal consistency, and factorial validity and concurrent validity were established. Conclusion The ESSA is a suitable measure for school-based mental health research in Asia.

Schools as meeting places : critical and inclusive literacies in changing local environments

Schools bring people together. Yet for many children there are major discontinuities between their lives in and out of school and such differences impact on literacy teaching and learning in both predictable and unpredictable ways. However if schools were reconceptualised as meeting places, where different people are thrown together (Massey, 2005) curriculum and pedagogy could be designed to take into account students’ and teachers’ different experiences and histories and to make those differences a resource for literacy learning. This paper draws on a long-term project with administrators and teachers working in a school situated in a site of urban regeneration and significant demographic shifts. It draws particularly on the ways in which one teacher re-positioned her grade 4/5 students as researchers, designers and journalists exploring student and staff memories of a school. It argues that place, and people’s relationships with places, can be a rich resource for literacy learning when teachers make it the object of study.

Critical Literacy in the Early Years : Emergence and Sustenance in an Age of Accountability

The work of early childhood educators in facilitating young children’s literacy acquisition has never received more attention than in the new millennium. Media hype about literacy crises, falling standards, teacher quality and government promises of minimum standards for all children have simultaneously increased the ‘visibility’ of literacy and the stakes for school performance. Indeed the last two decades could be seen as an age of pronouncements with respect to literacy, with politicians internationally promising to cure supposed low literacy with standardized tests and mandated programmes. As the rhetoric around literacy intensifies many late-capitalist economies are experiencing shifts that have increased the gaps between rich and poor, changed the very nature of work, and fundamentally altered the cultural mix of their populations. More and more children attending schools where English is the language of instruction speak it as a second or third language. Many children have experienced the effects of war, terrorism, migration and poverty. Many live in fractured, fragmented and changing families. Teacher populations are changing too. In some places aging teacher workforces mean that there is already a shortage of qualified teachers. Literacy is also changing as the impact of digital technologies on global and local communication, economies and knowledges begins to bite in everyday and working lives. It is challenging to think about how spaces for the emergence and sustenance of critical literacy in early childhood education might be created.

Chinese teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) academics' perceptions about research in a transitional culture

Research capacity building has become a prominent theme in higher education institutions in China and across the world. However, Chinese Teaching English as a Foreign Language academics' research output has been quite limited. In order to build their research capacity, it is necessary to understand their perceptions about research. This case study presents the perceptions about research of six Chinese Teaching English as a Foreign Language academics in a context of growing institutional demands for research. One-on-one interviews of 35-60 minutes' duration were conducted with these academics from an institution in north China. Thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews indicated that the Chinese Teaching English as a Foreign Language academics held positive perceptions about the teaching-research nexus. However, the value of research to them seemed to be limited to teaching and career advancement. They also expressed varied concerns about the institutional research requirements. The findings suggested several implications for the institution's administrators to further enhance academics' research capacity building.