Mapping the language of science and science teaching practices : a case study of early childhood school science

Concerns raised in educational reports about school science in terms of students. outcomes and attitudes, as well as science teaching practices prompted investigation into science learning and teaching practices at the foundational level of school science. Without science content and process knowledge, understanding issues of modern society and active participation in decision-making is difficult. This study contended that a focus on the development of the language of science could enable learners to engage more effectively in learning science and enhance their interest and attitudes towards science. Furthermore, it argued that explicit teaching practices where science language is modelled and scaffolded would facilitate the learning of science by young children at the beginning of their formal schooling. This study aimed to investigate science language development at the foundational level of school science learning in the preparatory-school with students aged five and six years. It focussed on the language of science and science teaching practices in early childhood. In particular, the study focussed on the capacity for young students to engage with and understand science language. Previous research suggests that students have difficulty with the language of science most likely because of the complexities and ambiguities of science language. Furthermore, literature indicates that tensions transpire between traditional science teaching practices and accepted early childhood teaching practices. This contention prompted investigation into means and models of pedagogy for learning foundational science language, knowledge and processes in early childhood. This study was positioned within qualitative assumptions of research and reported via descriptive case study. It was located in a preparatory-school classroom with the class teacher, teacher-aide, and nineteen students aged four and five years who participated with the researcher in the study. Basil Bernstein.s pedagogical theory coupled with Halliday.s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framed an examination of science pedagogical practices for early childhood science learning. Students. science learning outcomes were gauged by focussing a Hallydayan lens on their oral and reflective language during 12 science-focussed episodes of teaching. Data were collected throughout the 12 episodes. Data included video and audio-taped science activities, student artefacts, journal and anecdotal records, semi-structured interviews and photographs. Data were analysed according to Bernstein.s visible and invisible pedagogies and performance and competence models. Additionally, Halliday.s SFL provided the resource to examine teacher and student language to determine teacher/student interpersonal relationships as well as specialised science and everyday language used in teacher and student science talk. Their analysis established the socio-linguistic characteristics that promoted science competencies in young children. An analysis of the data identified those teaching practices that facilitate young children.s acquisition of science meanings. Positive indications for modelling science language and science text types to young children have emerged. Teaching within the studied setting diverged from perceived notions of common early childhood practices and the benefits of dynamic shifting pedagogies were validated. Significantly, young students demonstrated use of particular specialised components of school-science language in terms of science language features and vocabulary. As well, their use of language demonstrated the students. knowledge of science concepts, processes and text types. The young students made sense of science phenomena through their incorporation of a variety of science language and text-types in explanations during both teacher-directed and independent situations. The study informs early childhood science practices as well as practices for foundational school science teaching and learning. It has exposed implications for science education policy, curriculum and practices. It supports other findings in relation to the capabilities of young students. The study contributes to Systemic Functional Linguistic theory through the development of a specific resource to determine the technicality of teacher language used in teaching young students. Furthermore, the study contributes to methodology practices relating to Bernsteinian theoretical perspectives and has demonstrated new ways of depicting and reporting teaching practices. It provides an analytical tool which couples Bernsteinian and Hallidayan theoretical perspectives. Ultimately, it defines directions for further research in terms of foundation science language learning, ongoing learning of the language of science and learning science, science teaching and learning practices, specifically in foundational school science, and relationships between home and school science language experiences.

Preparing for Research Assessment: Co-evolution and Gamesmanship

In this paper we adopt a complex systems perspective to examine the perturbations caused by the introduction of the Research Quality Framework (RQF) at a research-intensive Australian university. This case is instructive as it 1) presents a Federal policy initiative that attempted to fundamentally alter the recognition and reward mechanism within a regulated funding environment, 2) analyses the strategies of an institution and its research groups as they sought to not only comply with the implementation of the RQF but to maximise their outcome,and 3) it reveals the ways that some actors used this perturbation to advance their own interests. In short, this case represents an instrumental study into the dynamics of how information systems, organisations, and individuals co-evolve in practice as they seek to navigate a complex problem scenario.

Ethical review in creative industries and other practice-based research

The processes used in Australian universities for reviewing the ethics of research projects are based on the traditions of research and practice from the medical and health sciences. The national guidelines for ethical conduct in research are heavily based on presumptions that the researcher–participant relationship is similar to a doctor–patient relationship. The National Health and Medical Research Council, Australian Research Council and Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee have made a laudable effort to fix this problem by releasing the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research in 2007, to replace the 1999 National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans. The new statement better encompasses the needs of the humanities, social sciences and creative industries. However, this paper argues that the revised National Statement and ethical review processes within universities still do not fully encompass the definitions of ‘research’ and the requirements, traditions, codes of practice and standards of the humanities, social sciences and creative industries. The paper argues that scholars within these disciplines often lack the language to articulate their modes of practice and risk management strategies to university-level ethics committees. As a consequence, scholars from these disciplines may find their research is delayed or stymied. The paper focuses on creative industries researchers, and explores the issues that they face in managing the ethical review process, particularly when engaging in practice-based research. Although the focus is on the creative industries, the issues are relevant to most fields in the humanities and social sciences.

An actor-network research frame for analysing complex socio-technical situations

This paper presents a “research frame” which we have found useful in analyzing complex socio- technical situations. The research frame is based on aspects of actor-network theory: “interressment”, “enrollment”, “points of passage” and the “trial of strength”. Each of these aspects are described in turn, making clear their purpose in the overall research frame. Having established the research frame it is used to analyse two examples. First, the use of speech recognition technology is examined in two different contexts, showing how to apply the frame to compare and contrast current situations. Next, a current medical consultation context is described and the research frame is used to consider how it could change with innovative technology. In both examples, the research frame shows that the use of an artefact or technology must be considered together with the context in which it is used.

State of the art and future challenges for information literacy research

This short paper focuses on strategic issues and important research questions.

Chaos or complex systems? Identifying factors influencing the success of international and NESB graduate research students in Engineering and Information Technology Fields

The paper explores the results an on-going research project to identify factors influencing the success of international and non-English speaking background (NESB) gradúate students in the fields of Engineering and IT at three Australian universities: the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the University of Western Australia (UWA), and Curtin University (CU). While the larger study explores the influence of factors from both sides of the supervision equation (e.g., students and supervisors), this paper focusses primarily on the results of an online survey involving 227 international and/or NESB graduate students in the areas of Engineering and IT at the three universities. The study reveals cross-cultural differences in perceptions of student and supervisor roles, as well as differences in the understanding of the requirements of graduate study within the Australian Higher Education context. We argue that in order to assist international and NESB research students to overcome such culturally embedded challenges, it is important to develop a model which recognizes the complex interactions of factors from both sides of the supervision relationship, in order to understand this cohort‟s unique pedagogical needs and develop intercultural sensitivity within postgraduate research supervision.

Engaging parents in STEM: Coteaching and cogenerative dialoguing in a Queensland high school

Diminished student interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) is recognised by educators, researchers and public policy makers as a concerning global trend. Inviting stakeholders like scientists and industry specialists to discuss their work is one means schools use to facilitate student engagement in the sciences. However, these visits generally comprise one-off sessions with minimal relevance to students’ particular and ongoing learning needs. This case study investigated coteaching and cogenerative dialoguing with parents in teaching a Year-8 multidisciplinary unit with science and technology foci. Two parents cotaught alongside the resident teacher and researcher over eight months. This paper concentrates on one parent, a medical scientist by profession. Data sources included video and audio recordings of cogenerative dialogues and classroom interactions, student work samples and journal entries. Data were interrogated using the sociological constructs of fields and capitals and the dialectic of structure|agency. The findings reveal how (a) the parent’s science and technology knowledge was tailored to the students’ needs initially and continually and (b) student-generated data indicated enhanced engagement in science and technology. The research speaks to schools and governments about enhancing STEM education by furthering collaborative relationships with relevant stakeholders.

Patterns and transitions of query reformulation during web searching

Purpose – To investigate and identify the patterns of interaction between searchers and search engine during web searching. Design/methodology/approach – The authors examined 2,465,145 interactions from 534,507 users of Dogpile.com submitted on May 6, 2005, and compared query reformulation patterns. They investigated the type of query modifications and query modification transitions within sessions. Findings – The paper identifies three strong query reformulation transition patterns: between specialization and generalization; between video and audio, and between content change and system assistance. In addition, the findings show that web and images content were the most popular media collections. Originality/value – This research sheds light on the more complex aspects of web searching involving query modifications.

Mapping of shallow coastal groundwaters, their hydrology and environmental geochemistry : Pumicestone catchment, Southeast Queensland

Blooms of the toxic cyanobacterium majuscula Lyngbya in the coastal waters of southeast Queensland have caused adverse impacts on both environmental health and human health, and on local economies such as fishing and tourism. A number of studies have confirmed that the main limiting nutrients (“nutrients of concern”) that contribute to these blooms area Fe, DOC, N, P and also pH. This study is conducted to establish the distribution of these parameters in a typical southeast Queensland coastal setting. The study maps the geochemistry of shallow groundwater in the mainland Pumicestone catchment with an emphasis on the nutrients of concern to understand how these nutrients relate to aquifer materials, landuse and anthropogenic activities. The results of the study form a GIS information layer which will be incorporated into a larger GIS model being produced by Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) to support landuse management to avoid/minimize blooms of Lyngbya in Moreton Bay, southeast Queensland, and other similar settings. A total of 38 boreholes were established in the mainland Pumicestone region and four sampling rounds of groundwater carried out in both dry and wet conditions. These groundwater samples were measured in the field for physico-chemical parameters, and in the laboratory analyses for the nutrients of concern, and other major and minor ions. Aquifer materials were confirmed using the Geological Survey of Queensland digital geology map, and geomaterials were assigned to seven categories which are A (sands), B (silts, sandy silts), C (estuarine mud, silts), D (humid soils), E (alluvium), F (sandstone) and G (other bedrock). The results of the water chemistry were examined by use of the software package AquaChem/AqQA, and divided into six groundwater groups, based on groundwater chemical types and location of boreholes. The type of aquifer material and location, and proximity to waterways was found to be important because they affected physico-chemical properties and concentrations of nutrients of concern and dissolved ions. The analytical results showed that iron concentrations of shallow groundwaters were high due to acid sulfate soils, and also mud and silt, but were lower in sand materials. DOC concentrations of these shallow groundwaters in the sand material were high probably due to rapid infiltration. In addition, DOC concentrations in some boreholes were high because they were installed in organic rich wetlands. The pH values of boreholes were from acidic to near neutral; some boreholes with pH values were low (< 4), showing acid sulfate soils in these boreholes. Concentrations of total nitrogen and total phosphorus of groundwaters were generally low, and the main causes of elevated concentrations of total nitrogen and total phosphorus are largely due to animal and human wastes and tend to be found in localized source areas. Comparison of the relative percentage of nitrogen species (NH3/NH4< Org-N, NO3-N and NO2-N) demonstrated that they could be related to sources such as animal waste, residential and agricultural fertilizers, forest and vegetation, mixed residents and farms, and variable setting and vegetation covers. Total concentrations of dissolved ions in sampling round 3 (dry period) were higher than those in sampling round 2 (wet period) due to both evaporation of groundwater in the dry period and the dilution of rainfall in the wet period. This showed that the highest concentrations of nutrients of concern were due to acid sulfate soils, aquifer materials, landuse and anthropogenic activities and were typically in aquifer materials of E (alluvium) and C (estuarine muds) and locations of Burpengary, Caboolture, and Glass Mountain catchments.

Collaborative academic/practitioner research in project management : examples and applications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a cost-benefit interpretation of academic-practitioner research by describing and analysing several recent relevant examples of academic-practitioner research with a focus on doctoral theses carried out at universities and business schools in clusters of research centred in North America, Australia and Europe. Design/methodology/approach – Using case study examples, a value proposition framework for undertaking collaborative research for higher degree level study is developed and presented. Findings – Value proposition benefits from this level of collaborative research can be summarised as enhancing competencies at the individual and organisational level as well as providing participating universities with high-quality candidates/students and opportunities for industry engagement. The project management (PM) professional bodies can also extend PM knowledge but they need to be prepared to provide active support. Practical implications – A model for better defining the value proposition of collaborative research from a range of stakeholder perspectives is offered that can be adapted for researchers and industry research sponsors. Originality/value – Few papers offer a value proposition framework for explaining collaborative research benefits. This paper addresses that need.

Doing blog research

Blogs and other online platforms for personal writing such as LiveJournal have been of interest to researchers across the social sciences and humanities for a decade now. Although growth in the uptake of blogging has stalled somewhat since the heyday of blogs in the early 2000s, blogging continues to be a major genre of Internet-based communication. Indeed, at the same time that mass participation has moved on to Facebook, Twitter, and other more recent communication phenomena, what has been left behind by the wave of mass adoption is a slightly smaller but all the more solidly established blogosphere of engaged and committed participants. Blogs are now an accepted part of institutional, group, and personal communications strategies (Bruns and Jacobs, 2006); in style and substance, they are situated between the more static information provided by conventional Websites and Webpages and the continuous newsfeeds provided through Facebook and Twitter updates. Blogs provide a vehicle for authors (and their commenters) to think through given topics in the space of a few hundred to a few thousand words – expanding, perhaps, on shorter tweets, and possibly leading to the publication of more fully formed texts elsewhere. Additionally, they are also a very flexible medium: they readily provide the functionality to include images, audio, video, and other additional materials – as well as the fundamental tool of blogging, the hyperlink itself. Indeed, the role of the link in blogs and blog posts should not be underestimated. Whatever the genre and topic that individual bloggers engage in, for the most part blogging is used to provide timely updates and commentary – and it is typical for such material to link both to relevant posts made by other bloggers, and to previous posts by the present author, both to background material which provides readers with further information about the blogger’s current topic, and to news stories and articles which the blogger found interesting or worthy of critique. Especially where bloggers are part of a larger community of authors sharing similar interests or views (and such communities are often indicated by the presence of yet another type of link – in blogrolls, often in a sidebar on the blog site, which list the blogger’s friends or favourites), then, the reciprocal writing and linking of posts often constitutes an asynchronous, distributed conversation that unfolds over the course of days, weeks, and months. Research into blogs is interesting for a variety of reasons, therefore. For one, a qualitative analysis of one or several blogs can reveal the cognitive and communicative processes through which individual bloggers define their online identity, position themselves in relation to fellow bloggers, frame particular themes, topics and stories, and engage with one another’s points of view. It may also shed light on how such processes may differ across different communities of interest, perhaps in correlation with the different societal framing and valorisation of specific areas of interest, with the socioeconomic backgrounds of individual bloggers, or with other external or internal factors. Such qualitative research now looks back on a decade-long history (for key collections, see Gurak, et al., 2004; Bruns and Jacobs, 2006; also see Walker Rettberg, 2008) and has recently shifted also to specifically investigate how blogging practices differ across different cultures (Russell and Echchaibi, 2009). Other studies have also investigated the practices and motivations of bloggers in specific countries from a sociological perspective, through large-scale surveys (e.g. Schmidt, 2009). Blogs have also been directly employed within both K-12 and higher education, across many disciplines, as tools for reflexive learning and discussion (Burgess, 2006).

ACE research vignette 001 : benefits and drawbacks of start-up team heterogeneity

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team of international Entrepreneurship researchers. In this vignette, Dr. Micheal Stuetzer considers some of the benefits and drawbacks associated with team start-up.

ACE research vignette 003 : different strokes for different folks - classification of entrepreneurial musicians and their use of online social networks

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team of international entrepreneurship researchers. In this vignette Dr Maria Kaya and Associate Professor Paul Steffens consider both the classification of musicians and their use of online social networks.

ACE research vignette 006 : why saving jobs and supporting failing firms can be detrimental

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team and other international Entrepreneurship researchers. In this vignette, we summarise the findings from a paper written by Avaid Pe'er and Ilan Vertinsky that examines "Why saving jobs and supporting failing firms can be detrimental".